Knight Dreams: The story of a boy and his wish for a suit of armour

My name is Lonnie Colson and I'm an armor-phile. Of course I prefer the term "Medieval arms and armour enthusiast" because it sounds a little less compulsive. There probably should be 12-step programs for people like me, but unfortunately there are not. My addiction started off simply enough. Ever since I was a small boy, I yearned to be a knight in shining armor. Unfortunately, I was born about five hundred years too late. Without exception, each and every Christmas I wrote 'suit of armor' at the top of my wish list--only slightly preceded by 'castle in the mountains' and 'million dollars.' Perfectly normal childhood, right?

As I grew older, I came to realize that the Santa Claus contingency would never pay off. For a time I entertained the notion of building my own armor. Needless to say, it was much easier said than done. My only notable success was a two-handed sword that I fashioned out of an old plow shank that weighed about three times as much as it should have.

Over the course of several years, I continued to look for an experienced armorer who could custom build me a suit of armor within my budget. A friend who was involved in the SCA, also known as the Society of Creative Anachronisms, gave me the contact information to several reputable companies. I immediately sent off for their catalogs and waited impatiently for them to arrive.

As soon as I received the catalog from Illusion Armoring, I became instantly fascinated with their work. I saw a suit of 15th century Italian with its smooth, rounded features in the Milanese style. It was exactly as I had always imagined, and I knew right away that I simply had to have it. Then came the unsolicited and distasteful dose of reality. For anyone who has never commissioned any sort of custom armor, it is not a speedy process. Measurements must be taken and monetary deposits made. Then comes the long and agonizing wait for your order to be filled.

 Any armourer worth his salt will have a considerable back log of orders The better the quality, the higher demand. That means you have to wait longer for what you want unless you are willing to settle for less--which I was not. As I had never actually worn a suit of armour, I had no idea how one was supposed to be strapped. Scott Martin agreed to attach all of the leather straps and buckles in a basic set up.

Estimated time of delivery was four months when I placed my deposit and jumped on the Illusion Armoring queue. The entire process took much longer. After almost nine tear-filled months of sheer agony, the armour finally arrived. I will not elaborate on the graphic language that I used when only a small box of miscellaneous pieces arrived a few days before the bulk of the shipment. I will tell you that I still remember the day when everything else arrived. The postman left the dreaded yellow slip in the mail box that essentially informed me that I would have to wait until the next day for re-delivery. Well, I would not--strike that, could not--wait. I drove all around the entire neighborhood until I found that blasted driver and made him surrender my box! I was almost dissappointed that the large card board box was not as enormous I as I had previously imagined. For the next few hours I was like a kid in the proverbial candy store. Want to know more about my armor?

Even though the wait had been absolutely excruciating, I did in fact survive. In my youth I had studied about armor; I had sketched armor; I had played role-playing games centered around armor; I had even dreamed about wearing armor; but, until I received my own harness in the mail, I knew next to nothing about the real wear of armor. I must admit that it was not as easy as I had thought. I had no arming doublet and no real idea where to get one. I conducted enough research to know that all of the ones I was encountering were not very accurate--especially for the time period I wanted. It was this extensive and exhaustive search that led me to finally break down and design my own Web site that I would use to showcase all of the most useful material available at the time. Once I finally had my harness complete, I took over 90 photographs of the various stages of donning the armour. I compiled them into a four-page gallery entitled My Arming Pages which attracted thousands of visitors from all around the world.