[Archers] 15th Century Archer Portrait

[Garth Groff]

Noble Friends of the Bow,

Today I happened to run across this photo on the cover of a book: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_de_Luetz . I didn't take me long to 
locate the photo on line, along with this brief biography of the 
subject. You can blow this photo up a bit by clicking on it. I was 
immediately struck by the arrows he holds. These are apparently 
gentlemen's sporting arrows. They feature a parabolic fletch, are 
crested with three black bands, and the color of the shafts suggests 
natural wood, probably sealed with beeswax and lard, danish oil, or 
boiled linseed oil. Good images of arrows from our period are hard to 
come by, but this shows that by the mid-16th century, some sporting 
arrows were not that different from what we use today.

Yours Aye,


Lord Mungo Napier, Lover of Archery History