This exquisite armour was a gift to Prince Charles (1600–1649), later Charles I, from the Prince of Savoy. It is decorated across its entire blued surface with silver encrustation, incising and counterfeit-damascening in gold – a technique by which precious metal wire or foil is applied to metal.

The armour's elaborate decoration did not remain untouched, however. In 1625, the wife of the Master Workman at Greenwich, Thomas Stevens Jnr, was said to have 'stolen away nearly 200 studs of gold from the armour presented by the Duke of Savoy…'. A 1629 Remain subsequently noted that although the 'whole Armor' had originally been 'laid with bosses of gold', only eight now remained, 'the rest euther lost or taken'. The exact design of these missing gold plaques is unknown, but they must have been pierced to make visible the thin gold leaf which decorates the places where they were attached.