Islamic Arms and Armor in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

[rand]

Opening the book for the first time immediately saw quality photo's of identified early chain mail armor with close-up images of links showing construction. This alone made the book worth getting as their are few images of these available.

When the Met starts including the back side photo's of armor their value go's up a notch. The Italian arms and armor started doing this long ago and that is one of the reasons those books carry value.

Referring to an educational system opinion having higher value than a collectors determination is short sighted as long as the collectors opinion is collaberated by research that can be scrutinized the same way the edu. opinion can be scrutinized.

In many ways the collector can have a more trained eye because they purchase objects and in doing so will take very close inspections to identify an object. I would rate a long term edu. professor at the same level as a long time serious collector and have seen from experience that there is a keen interest to share information both ways.

rand