Saturday, August 21, 2010

19th Century Uniforms (and ImagiNations)

I picked up a book at the bookstore today that I didn't know I wanted (that's one of the things I like about bookstores - just browsing around and finding stuff; hard to do that on-line!). The book is called An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Military Uniforms of the 19th Century. Here is a link to it on amazon
It gives a little bit of history for various conflicts and armies, some well-known like the US Civil War and others lesser known like the conflicts between Prussia and Denmark over the Schleswig-Holstein region. There are also sections on the Crimea war, colonial conflicts and more. The book is 9x12 inches, hardback, over 250 pages, with lots of color illustrations. It's not comprehensive by any means, but does include some "uniforms" you might not expect, such as Apaches, sutlers, and other types that you don't always encounter in uniform books. The variety of uniforms, in style, color, etc., leaves me to believe there is plenty of scope for ImagiNations in the 19th century, too.

It looks like there are enough illustrations and information for a least a basic understanding of the period/s and of what the various bits of equipment might look like (to get an idea of what colors to paint things), that I know would find useful for painting miniatures, even if they weren't exactly the units in the book.

The same publisher (and author/artists, I believe) have also done a similar book for uniforms of the American Revolution and the Napoleonic armies. I'll probably look to get the American Revolution book (and wish they had one out for the 18th century in general, similar to the 19th century one).

4 comments:

David Morfitt said...

The AWI volume came in for quite a lot of flak on the TMP forums for getting lots of the detail wrong so I don't know how authoritative the others are but if you're using them for inspiration for ImagiNations I don't imagine that will bother you too much. Just thought I'd mention it...

Cheers,

David
http://nba-sywtemplates.blogspot.com/

Fitz-Badger said...

Ah, thanks for that info. I'll take it with a grain of salt then and may not get the AWI book.

David Morfitt said...

These books are still a useful "one stop" introduction to a period, though, so long as one doesn't trust every detail! Unfortunately, for really detailed knowledge of the minutiae specialist volumes (or sometimes good websites) are the only answer. This book may be useful for the SYW (with the same caveat): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Armies-Seven-Years-War-Commanders/dp/0752459236/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280957059&sr=8-4 I'll be looking to see what the reviews have to say!

Cheers,

David
http://nba-sywtemplates.blogspot.com/

Conrad Kinch said...

I've always been an Osprey man myself - though I've found that these often offer rather more detail than the average wargamer needs.