Wednesday 9 September 2009

Going frogging crazy

I’m having a bit of a problem painting the lace on these Royal Horse Artillery gunners. Apart from the fact that in true Hinton Hunt style the detail is not easy to follow with the brush I just can’t decide what colour the braiding is supposed to be.

According to the pictures in my Blandford Uniforms of Waterloo it appears to be almost a gold colour for all ranks and I have tried this on the Officer on the left. However in my copy of Military Dress of the Peninsular War it says it should be yellow for the rank and file so that’s what I’ve done to the gunner on the right. I don’t think that either really looks right and every picture I find seems to show a different shade of yellow/gold.

So what colour should they be? Answers on a postcard please (or perhaps just leave me a comment).

4 comments:

Pjotr said...

May I suggest taking a look at some modern day pictures of the King's troop Royal Horse Artillery. I believe these are a good reference as far as the yellow lacing goes. Just "google" under pictures and you'll find lots of photographs.

Peter

Stryker said...

Hi Peter - thanks for that. I had already looked at some of those pics but I just had another go. It would appear that Officers and men both have the same colour pale gold lace. I saw the King's Troop display at the Devon Show a couple of years ago - am amazing sight but I didn't have my camera!

Ian

Rafael Pardo said...

Hi
Acording to the Osprey book MAA Wellington's Spealist Troops, the officers (and the staff sergeants and maybe the sergeants) wore gold lace. The other ranks wore yellow lace.
Rafa

Anonymous said...

I use "yellow" paint fot both officers & ORs. I find gold lace very unconvincing in "gold" i.e. metallic paint. I know others can achieve brilliant results but I save metallics for buttons etc only. Does not really answer the question though! My sources say gold for officers etc, yellow for ORs.

Matt