Shoulder Plates & Neck Armor

About

Shoulder Plates & Neck Armor Shoulder armor is the piece that completes the upper body. A chest plate covers the torso, vambraces protect the arms, but the shoulders are what connects them, fills the silhouette from every angle, and frames the neck and head in a way that no other single piece can. Get the shoulders right and a kit reads as whole. Leave them bare and even an excellent chest piece can look unfinished. This category covers two distinct types of upper body plate armor, each solving a different part of that problem. Shoulder plates, in the form of pauldrons and spaulders, protect the shoulder joint itself and the upper arm. Gorgets protect the throat and neck. Both are covered here, and several pieces in the range combine them into a single assembly. Shoulder Plates: Pauldrons and Spaulders Shoulder plates are the broad family of armor pieces designed to protect the shoulder joint, the top of the upper arm, and in more complete designs, the upper chest and back as well. Within that family, two distinct forms have the most historical grounding. A pauldron is the larger and more complete of the two: a multi-plate assembly that covers the entire shoulder and typically extends across part of the chest and back, often with articulated lames that follow the contour of the upper arm downward. Pauldrons are the shoulder armor of fully equipped knights and men-at-arms, the pieces that give late medieval plate armor its characteristic broad, imposing silhouette. They are also the more involved piece to fit and wear correctly, typically securing via straps to the chest and backplate or to an underlying garment. A spaulder is a simpler, more compact shoulder defense: fewer plates, less coverage of the chest and back, and generally easier to wear as a standalone addition to a kit that is not full plate. Spaulders are historically associated with soldiers and fighters who needed shoulder protection without the weight and complexity of full pauldrons, and in a LARP