"color (and weight) of French bearskins " Topic

Hi All,

The foot grenadiers and carabiniers wore black and brown bearskins. And they looked awesome:
link

However, I heard that also the goatskins were used.
Were they painted black ?

By the way, how heavy is bearskin ? Were they heavier/lighter than Austrian and Scottish fur caps ?

And last question. Why the grenadier bearskin had the front plate and the carabinier's was without it ?

there is a doctorate in answering that last question

Looking at museum pieces, none are truly black. Black undercoat, yes, highlight with a very dark brown….and then the dark grey, drybrushed of course. You can't paint a goatskin…think about it. You could dye it but, first shower of rain, your mascara runs.

Breed black goats instead. Horse Grenadiers bearskins were much more impressive. I suspect they had once belonged to a member of the ursidae…unlike their foot colleagues'!

deadhead wrote: "You could dye it but, first shower of rain, your mascara runs."

I thought the same. You say that the bearskins in the museum are not really black. This is interesting. I think I will repaint my elites' fur caps from black to something like dark-brown (or black-brown).

By the way, I can't imagine France being country with plenty of wild bears. Scandinavia and Russia, yes, but France ?
This is puzzling to me why Russia did not use her resources.
With thousands of bears roaming the countryside and Siberia they could kill some. All the Russian infantry should wear bearskins !

The French had access to bear pelts from Canada up to 1763; from that point on, this resource fell to the British, who equipped all their grenadiers (and fusiliers) with the item. I think the French started using goatskin during the Revolution, due to cost or possibly also anti-elitism.

The Russians adopted the uniform styles of Prussia from time to time (and later vice versa), and hence grenadiers had metal-fronted mitre caps; the Swedes also seem to have used metal-fronted mitre caps for their grenadiers. Oddly enough, Great Britain and Russia became the exceptions to the use of mitre caps by Protestant countries and bearskin caps by Catholic/Orthodox countries, although contact between the British and several German states during the AWI led to some of them adopting fur caps after 1783 (Hesse Cassel being the first to do so after its forces returned from America).

The brown thing…it is like you never see a truly black horse. I use black and then highlight with German camo black brown from Vallejo 70.822. It has to be subtle……may not matter in 28mm scale frankly.

You mentioned Scottish fur caps in your Q.

I assume you are not talking about the head gear of the Highland kilted regiments. That was a flat bonnet carrying (truly black) ostrich feathers, not fur. Only Scottish fur cap I can think of is Scots Greys'

ostrich feathers ? To be honest I'm surprised.
To me the scottish headwears look like fur caps.

If it was up to me I would rather give them
eagle feathers than the ostrich ones.
IMHO, the eagle feathers simply look more martial.
(Eagle is USA symbol, and the Indian chiefs and great warriors wore bonnets of eagle feathers, and even Australia doesn't honor ostrich.)

ostrich feathers, yes, no fur caps, it was a cloth bonnet and then to a larger or lesser extend sotrich feahters were attached.

Sir,

I understand that bearskins were goat skins – the hides were no doubt dressed to resemble bear fur and perhaps this included the use of dye. The lack of access to actual bears did not stop their issue – much the same as a lack of a ready supply of monkeys I suppose did not affect the ornament of le cul de singe :).

Much of the flash of Napoleonic uniforms was just that – if the colour of the bearskins leached out when it rained, that wouldn't be much of a consideration for those supplying or receiving I suppose. For example, the shako plates of French shakos are in fact very often thin, tinny and cheap looking.The quality of the manusfacture in the period I think could be pretty poor.

I have a model figure of a Spanish officer in a light brown bearskin, I recall this was from a different animal (otter?)which I must have seen in somewhere in an illustration.

I have handled a modern British Guards bearskin. The frame upon which the fur sits is light wood, the bearskin itself is perhaps lighter than the reproduction French shako that I've worn at re enactments ( and which are prone in hot weather after some time to give you a headache, a bit like a kevlar helmet can, perhaps because of the weight.)

The Scottish bonnets are indeed decorated with ostritch feathers, something I have never worked out as to why. I did read an account of Highlanders selling them to fashionable Portuguese ladies which would leave the jocks with their low felt bonnet with diced head band which of course when stiffened and boxed out to look like a stovepipe shako was the headgear of the 71st.

Regards,

Brian