# The Name in the Title Is the Part That Is Not Documented > Arms and armour carries more disputed provenance than any other class in this archive: 22 of its 95 ownership links, against one of 98 for furniture. The date is struck into the metal. The famous wearer is carried by a story. > The Study - 2026-09-06 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-name-in-the-title-is-the-undocumented-part/ ## Key points - Arms and armour is the worst-documented object class in this archive for ownership. Of its 95 graded provenance links, 22 are disputed. That is 23 per cent, against 8 per cent across all 1,994 graded links here, and against one disputed link in 98 for furniture, one in 95 for printed books and one in 69 for photographs. - It is also the only class here where a museum's own title hedges the owner's name. Two of the fourteen arms and armour records carry a qualifier in the title itself, the Metropolitan's Armor Garniture, Probably of King Henry VIII of England and its Half Armor attributed to the Duke of Sessa. Across the other 271 records in this archive, no title hedges at all. - Where the title does not hedge, the provenance often does. The Metropolitan's Armor (Yoroi) of Ashikaga Takauji states the name flatly, and this record grades that donation disputed: the attribution to Takauji by name was first published by Yamagami Hatiro in 1928, and no fourteenth-century document or inscription names him as donor. - The Armor of Emperor Ferdinand I was believed through the nineteenth century to have belonged to Albert V of Bavaria. It was reassigned to Ferdinand by a Vienna armoury director reading the wearer's build and the crowned Reichsadler on the sabatons. Neither the curator's name nor the date of that reattribution is documented in any source consulted for this record. - The evidence that survives best on an armour is the evidence that was struck into it. Greenwich put 1527 on three separate plates of the Henry VIII garniture and Kunz Lochner put 1549 on Ferdinand's harness. In both cases the date and the workshop rest on the object; the celebrated wearer rests on testimony. ## An armour can date itself, and it cannot name its wearer ## Arms and armour carries three times the archive's rate of disputed ownership ## Two museum titles here carry the doubt inside the title, and both are armour ## Where the title states the name flatly, the provenance often disputes it ## Presumably is the museum's own word, and it holds up a whole chain ## How to read an armour label ## Why this archive is free to read Armour is the object class this archive trusts least on ownership and most on manufacture, and the two facts have the same cause. A workshop that dated a backplate left evidence in steel. A household that remembered whose grandfather wore the suit left evidence in conversation, and conversation is what reaches us as tradition, as presumably, and as a name in a museum title that the file underneath cannot support. Read the date off the metal. Read the wearer off the paperwork, and when there is no paperwork, say so and price the object as what it demonstrably is. ## Questions **Why is armour so often named after a famous person who cannot be proved to have owned it?** Because armour was made for identifiable individuals and then survived in family armouries, shrines and castles where memory outlasted paperwork. A tradition that a suit belonged to a king is often the only ownership record there is, and it becomes the object's name long before anyone tests it. In this archive 22 of the 95 graded ownership links on arms and armour are disputed, against 8 per cent across all classes. **What does probably mean in a museum title such as Armor Garniture, Probably of King Henry VIII of England?** It means the museum accepts the association but cannot cite a document for it. In this case the Metropolitan states its belief that Henry VIII presented the garniture to the vicomte de Turenne in 1527, and describes the next transfer, to Galiot de Genouilhac, with the word presumably. No contemporary document naming this armour and either recipient is cited in the entry. **Is a hedged title a sign that a museum is unsure and an unhedged one a sign that it is certain?** No, and treating it that way will mislead you. Two of the clearest cases of a disputed owner in this archive, the yoroi of Ashikaga Takauji and the armour of Ferdinand I, carry titles that state the name without any qualifier, while the provenance record grades the connection disputed in both. Read the provenance, not the label. **What can be established about an armour with confidence?** Date, workshop and construction, when the object carries them. Greenwich struck 1527 into three separate plates of the Henry VIII garniture, Kunz Lochner dated Ferdinand's harness 1549, and the Takauji yoroi is placed in the early fourteenth century by its kozane construction, its closure type and its surviving original silk lacing. None of that evidence depends on anyone's memory. ## Sources - [1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, catalogue entry for Armor Garniture, Probably of King Henry VIII of England, accession 19.131.1a-r, t-w, .2a-f, l. Read 6 September 2026. Source for the 1527 dating on backplate, fauld reinforce and lower tace lame, for the Turenne presentation given as belief, for the word presumably on the Genouilhac transfer, and for the nineteenth-century Crussol d'Uzes bequest. - [2] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, public collection API, object 23944, Kunz Lochner, Armor of Emperor Ferdinand I (1503-1564), accession 33.164a-x. Queried 6 September 2026. Source for the 1549 date, the maker, the 1933 purchase through the Rogers Fund and the George D. Pratt gift, and the object title as the museum states it. - [3] Morihiro Ogawa, 'A Famous Fourteenth-Century Japanese Armor', The Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 24 (1989). Source for the Shinomura Hachimangu donation tradition, for the March 1333 dating the museum's own research specifies, for Yamagami Hatiro's 1928 publication of the attribution to Takauji by name, and for the Matsui family custody and the eventual sale. - [4] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for object 21996, Half Armor attributed to Don Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba y Fernandez de Cordoba, Duke of Sessa (1520/1524-1578), accession 04.3.270a-o. Read 6 September 2026. Source for the museum's hedged title, the reported 1643 Infantado inventory, the Laurent photograph of about 1865-70, and the Spitzer assembly from two fire-damaged armours. - [5] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection entry for Armor (Yoroi) of Ashikaga Takauji (1305-1358), accession 14.100.121a-e. Read 6 September 2026. Source for the museum's unqualified title and for the construction evidence dating the cuirass, skirt and waidate to the early fourteenth century. - [6] Leslie Southwick, 'Henry VIII's Almain Armoury at Greenwich and the Master Workmen to the Crown', Arms and Armour (Taylor and Francis). Source for the operation of the Royal Almain Armoury at Greenwich and its restriction to royal and diplomatic work rather than open commission.