Books

One of the things that comes with 25 years of work as an armourer and general artifact maker is a research library. The only thing that comes close is a museum photo collection and a good book has all sorts of information that is not immediately obvious from what an artifact looks like or what its card says. Indeed cards can be very misleading, the Danish National Museum, for instance, still calls "bollock" daggers, "kidney" daggers (in deference to Queen Victoria, no doubt). The Met's wonderful armour collection can not always be taken at face value having been "restored". This restoration extended to the point of using old armour plate as stock metal to weld on to incomplete pieces (the helm on the Red Velvet suit is an example) thus "restoring it". At any rate research is as important as images. There are, however, many books in the world and most of them are less useful than one might like. Books also come in and out of fashion, many excellent books are long out of print and although they may still be found, they are unknown and it is hard to search without a target. North Star Armoury's book section is meant to help with these problems. Many of the books we value are no longer easily available (or available at all), but others are just unknown, they can be found if you know to look for them. It has always been frustrating to find duplicate copies of wonderful books and to have to let them go (you can only give the apprentices so many 12th night gifts) and so we have gotten into the book business. To be clear, we are not in the business of looking for cheap books with Viking or Medieval in the title. The books we sell are books that pass the test of being in our library (or would be if we didn't have something way cooler). You will find no dogs in this section, nothing bought simply to fill shelf space. Occasionally you will find unobtainable books and always you will find worthy books. So have a look. Let us guide you to some great books. Some will be new, some "new old stock", and other used. Unless otherwise stated assume that they are used (and be glad to see them at all:>). We try to describe the book but if you have questions please contact us.