Late medieval vambraces

In the second half of the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, western knights began wearing vambraces. These were part of a wider development of later plate armour. Initially made out of leather, such armour rapidly came to be made out of steel.

Vambraces were worn alongside elbow couters and rerebraces for the upper arm. Eventually, in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they merged into a single armour for the arm, articulated with rivets at the elbow and protected by a small metal disc.