Basic Information
The gorget is a piece of plate armour that protects the wearer's neck, normally mounting atop a breastplate or cuirass. This will normally be worn over at least a padded coif, and quite often a mail coif as well.
In the most comprehensive designs the wearer's helm overlaps the top of the gorget (either completely or by means of a beevor or camail), thus providing total coverage of a vulnerable joint.
After the general elimination of plate armour, some users - often officers of Old World cavalry units - took to wearing a ceremonial gorget as part of their full dress uniform. This is usually a crescent shaped piece of metal - often brass or gilded metal - stamped with a regimental crest and/or other decorations and hung around the neck so that it lies on the upper chest like some kind of amulet.