This next helmet looks like a made up joke. Actually, it was made in Austria by Konrad Seusenhofer and was a gift from Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I to HenryVIII in 1514. It seems that Henry VIII gave it to his jester to look after which seems fitting.
The earliest armour seems to have shown up in Japan in the 4th Century. In China armour was more often made for covering just the vital areas. Full body armour hindered their martial art movements too much. In pre-Qin dynasty times, leather armour was made out of various animals including the rhinoceros!
The helmet below was made at some point between 1471 and 1532 in Germany by Kolman Helmschmid. It would have been used at festivals and tournaments and had a removable front piece so that you could use a more sensible visor at more austere occasions. It’s supposed to resemble the face of an Ottoman Turk.
Chainmail it seems, was first developed by the Celts around 300BC and then copied by the Romans. This type of armour using interlocking smaller parts of metal gave a soldier more freedom to move. However, after the Black Death had killed off most of the people in Europe, the cost of labour went up and plate armour came back into fashion as it was less time-consuming to make. They would only use chainmail to protect sensitive areas like the armpit and goolies.
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