Officer Silk Liners

b.loree

b.loree

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I have been planning a post on the variations in colour and design, that we find on officer private purchase liners. I would like to thank Randy Trawnik from Age of Kings for granting permission to use pictures taken from their site. Let's take a look: ( ## This post is under reconstruction 2018-2020)
First an example of the officer liner worn 1842-1888:

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Note that the spine tang simply curves over the edge of the visor, no split brad holds it on. In addition, square tipped fingers with 2 holes and many in my experience have a sort of herringbone pattern on the leather.
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Tschapka officer liner with metal Dukal Crown and Cypher, an extremely rare example.
IMG_5900.JPG The tschapka itself, which I was fortunate to do some work on.
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A picture showing the unique way in which the tschapka officer sweatband is stitched on to the shell.
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A rare tschapka officer cloth liner made from linen/canvas, very soiled from use. I have never seen another like this.






A size button with manufacturer's initials.


Saxon Train Officer with the more expensive woven silk ribbon style of liner, lime green.

similar liner on a GdK officer helme. Note the cypher/initials stamped in gold on the silk. This is a rare feature in my experience.


Baden Dragoner Officer liner, a wine colour.

Dark green liner, the only one I have encountered to date.

Unusual Tschapka officer liner...heavy cotton.

Another high quality "ribboned" liner this time with white silk. A Bavarian Feld Arty helme in my collection.


A rare Hessen officer helme from JR 117 with a surprise inside.



I had no idea that black was ever used!! :eek: My thanks once again to Randy T from Age of Kings for providing this pic of a rare helmet with a unique liner!
 
This is an example of a war time liner and typical of what they look like after 100 years. The cloth, which seems to have been a satin of some kind is extremely thin, like tissue paper. As such it does not stand the test of time.
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Brian ;
I have heard that Royals seem to have white silk liners
in their helmets . I have a 1 Garde Regt zu Fuss to a Royal Prince
with a white silk liner . True or not I do not know .
I have had other Royal helmets over the years
but at the time , I paid no attention to the color of the liner .
it was of much more interest if their cypher with a crown
was on the liner .
I would guess if you had the money to spend
you could purchase whatever color of liner
that you wanted , as long as you had the money
to pay for it .

Steve
 
Nice examples Brian!

I've heard that about royal helmets too, but I think in many cases, if not most or all, it was a matter of choice, except during war time when one probably had to get what one could.

Here's a Prussian infantry officer helmet (nothing special, fiber helmet), light gray-green silk:







Bavarian officer, infantry, etc. white silk:





Maker mark and liner on a Prussian General a'la Suite, light gray green silk:







Since others were showing the exteriors as well as the liners, I added those for you folks.

:D Ron
 
Here's my contribution:

Garde Landwehr Pionier





Pruissian M95 General





Bavarian M95 General (Prinz Alfons of Bavaria)





Bavarian wartime M15 officer Artillerie





Wurtemberg wartime M15 Reserve officer Infanterie





Saksen Anhalt M95 Inf. Officer





Mecklemburg M95 Officer Infanterie





Braunschweig IR92 M95 (post 1912) pickelhaube of Johan Albrecht (regent of Braunschweig)


 
Hello Adler ;

Were you able to I D the owner of I R 92
" A " cypher on liner ?

Charles told me that he was able to visit you
last year

Steve
 
Here are a couple of my different ones, similar have been shown above.

First two are from Saxon officer helmets, next two including a wonderful AWS marked liner are from Garde officer helmets.

James







 
Thank you to everyone for taking the time to photograph your helmets and post them on this thread. We are very fortunate to have so many helmets to look at and compare. Once again, this is one of the advantages of this digital forum...no book publisher would print 20 pictures of liners. Some observations....it would seem that the most common colours were: cream, rusty brown and various shades of lime green, dark green being the rarest of these. The uber rare colour would seem to be black as we have only one example, which I had never seen before in 30 years of collecting.
A "ribbed silk" is the most common material used, although we do see "watered silk" and satin. We also have one example of a coarse cotton/linen cloth on a pre war officer tschapka. I have seen one other piece with similar coarse cotton cloth. There are also 2 examples of what I believe to be post war helmets with a stiff mesh type patterned material (man made, synthetic). Both these helmets have non scalloped edges to the sweat band. Karel has provided us with one example of a non scalloped liner on his M15 Bavarian Artillery helmet which prevents us from saying that anything without scallops is post war. Gunnar has posted one example with the perforations (small holes) in the front of the sweat band. We have seen this before and discussed it. I believe we decided this was post war production.
Regarding cyphers, we see metal ones which I feel were obviously used by the very wealthy nobility. There are also liners with stamped letters or cyphers in gold on the silk. In addition, some manufacturers embossed their names etc in gold on the sweat band. Finally, the most fancy and therefore, most expensive liner option appears to be the type with woven silk ribbon along the scalloped edge.
This is what I see here, I welcome any further comments from the members.
 
Does anyone know when officers changed from the leather petals to the silk/cloth lining in the helmets? I've heard that it was the vogue to have silk/cloth lining at the turn of the 20th century. Does anyone know anything about this?
 
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