Officer Rank Background Color

[mtvernon]

*I searched the site before I posted*

Having spent most of my time recearching the common soldier, I was caught unawares recently when I made captain of my local SVR company. In putting my uniform together, I used rank insignia that had a dark blue (staff officer) background. Until a couple of weeks ago, I had never noticed the 'french' or 'sky' blue background on any picture of an officer or in reenacting. It shows I still have a mountain of stuff to learn, and this should've been an easy one!

After it was pointed out, I immediately ordered the correct insignia for my impression, and all's fine and good. However, this morning I was perusing EOG and found most examples therein of line officers appeared to display the dark blue. I did see a few lighter shades, but it made me wonder how closely the regs on this were adhered to and what others have found to be the case.

I'll be posting my staff captain's bars and the 1st Lt. (where I started out) bars soon here for all interested in buying them. They're N*** S*****'s triple-rich ones, beautifully made. I'm replacing them with the same, only the 'correct' color. In both cases, they were sewn on but other than that have no wear whatsoever. They've barely seen the light of day.

[DougCooper]

Many of us noticed the same thing over the years, and suspect, like most things colored from the war...."blue" and "dark blue" may have been the operative descriptions, but sky, light, Prussian, French, Cornflower, medium, dark, deep, indigo, pale, army and other shades were all present, produced and/or sold by your average sutler up to Brooks Brothers. That is to say nothing of what the intervening 145 years have done to the original colors.

Take a photo today and then dig em back out in 50 years. :D

[Curt Schmidt]

Hallo!

Don't forget... "Saxony" blue. :)

It was an era of vegetable dyestuff that was not as light-fast and color-fast as later aniline dyes.
Plus it was also an era lacking modern color-chip spec technology.

Curt