The Periodic Table of Weapons

The Periodic Table of Weapons began as a design experiment: could the full sweep of human weaponry be organized into a single, readable format? The answer turned out to be a 36-by-24-inch poster that catalogs over 50 weapons across five historical epochs, from the first stone tools to modern firearms.

The poster itself is 100% custom hand-illustrated original artwork. On this website, some of the individual weapon reference images are sourced from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's public-domain collection. The Met has a large arms and armor department, and their Open Access policy made those reference images free to use.

The poster arranges weapons chronologically within five epochs: the Ancient Age, the Bronze and Iron Ages, the Middle Ages, the Early Modern Age, and the Modern Age. Within each epoch, weapons are grouped by type -- edged, blunt, ranged, siege, and firearms.

The project was originally published in May 2017 by Verge Studios and sold as a limited print run on glossy stock. This site is the permanent home for the project -- the weapon illustrations are available here as desktop wallpapers, and the full historical narrative from the poster is reproduced in the epochs section.