This helmet was designed by William Morris as a model for the mural paintings in the Oxford Union in 1857. It is a type of ‘bascinet’ with a visor based on historic helmets that were common in the fourteenth century. The helmet was made for Morris along with a sword and suit of chainmail by a blacksmith near Oxford Castle. It features an adjustable visor and red-painted neckpiece supporting chain mail gorget.
Edward Burne-Jones described the episode at Oxford that led to Morris commissioning the props in John William Mackail’s ‘Life of William Morris’: ‘For the purposes of our drawing we often needed armour, and of a date and design so remote that no examples existed for our use. Therefore Morris, whose knowledge of all these things seemed to have been born in him, and who never at any time needed books of reference for anything, set to work to make designs for an ancient kind of helmet called a basinet, and for a great surcoat of ringed mail with a hood of mail and the skirt coming below the knees. These were made for him by a stout little smith who had a forge near the Castle. Morris’s visits to the forge were daily, but what scenes happened there we shall never know ; the encounters between these two workmen were always stubborn and angry as far as I could see. One afternoon when I was working high up at my picture, I heard a strange bellowing in the building, and turning round to find the cause, saw an unwonted sight. The basinet was being tried on, but the visor, for some reason, would not lift, and I saw Morris embedded in iron, dancing with rage and roaring inside.’
