A bunch of you have asked about the t-shirts that Nathan and Craig wear in some of our YouTube videos. While the "+5 shirts of sword making" are reserved for our crew, we've created a new design for all of you. Introducing the all new, highly anticipated, Arms and Armor "+5 shirt of sword fighting." We usually don't make this kind of stuff since it is a pain in the butt and uses up time better spent just making swords, rapiers, spears, axes, and other weapons for all of you. However, we found a way to make them available without having to carry a bunch of merchandise, and the company that is printing them will do all the work. Also, we think it might be our 40th anniversary, depending on how exactly you calculate it (41 if it's incorporation, 40 if it's when we opened our first store at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival), so that's something to celebrate.
The shirts are available only until September 15th, 2023. If you buy one of these it will be printed and mailed to you soon after the sale closes (they say it usually takes a week to ten days to print and package all the orders).
The shirts have our logo on the front with the phrase "hand crafting fine historical arms since 1982" below in fine print. On the back, in a rad gothic font, it reads "+5 shirt of sword fighting". These are offered in unisex and women's shirts and in a unisex zip-up hoody that just has our logo on it. You can have whatever color you want so long as that color is grey (you already have too many black t-shirts). Oh yeah, and the shirts are v-neck because you are a sword fighting animal.
We have always been dedicated to making our customers cooler and better looking, usually by arming them to the teeth, but in this case by offering you a nice, soft, shirt. We aren't trying to make any money on these, so we are selling them essentially at cost. This shirt is probably magic or something and we bet it will make you a more bad-ass swords-person. The current plan is that we may offer a slightly different shirt or something periodically. So, you know, collect them all.
You are welcome.
Click here to go to the merchandise store.
Nathan Clough, Ph.D. is Vice President of Arms and Armor and a member of the governing board of The Oakeshott Institute. He is a historical martial artist and a former university professor of cultural geography. He has given presentations on historical arms at events including Longpoint and Combatcon, and presented scholarly papers at, among others, The International Congress on Medieval Studies.
Craig Johnson is the Production Manager of Arms and Armor and Secretary of The Oakeshott Institute. He has taught and published on the history of arms, armor and western martial arts for over 30 years. He has lectured at several schools and Universities, WMAW, HEMAC, 4W, and ICMS at Kalamazoo. His experiences include iron smelting, jousting, theatrical combat instruction and choreography, historical research, European martial arts and crafting weapons and armor since 1985