"The Western Uniforms of Peter the Great's Army" Topic

"The first study of uniforms of Tsar Peter's army was published in 1842 by A.V. Viskovatov in the 2nd volume of a multi-volume "The Historical description of dress and armament of Russian troops" ('Istoricheskoe opisanie odezhdy i vooruzhenia rossiiskikh voisk'). The uniforms in it were described based on few first-hand documents, illustrations and surviving artifact. Some details about regimental uniform colors were given in the Appendix to the volume. However, sources used by the author were scarce and the authentic pieces weren't described correctly. Thus the resulting research by Viskovatov came out rather superficial and illustrations drawn to supplement his work were unreliable. Still it was reprinted in 1899 and remained the only source of knowledge about Petrine uniforms for readers from 1840-s until 1990-s. Viskovatov was (and even still is) the most readily available and the most broadly known authority about the subject. And because of that, all third-hand literature including that published elsewhere in the world kept on reproducing and circulating the details that were not necessarily reliable…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Nice Find!

Nice article indeed. I had to find this stuff out the hard way this year by trawling the internet after some Russians told me off about some preview sculpts!

Happy you enjoyed it my friends! (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Yes Clib,

It looks like your latest sculpts are consistent with the article!

Cheers, I hope they are, there's a couple of things I've missed. I gave a couple of figures hanging neckcloths (for a bit of variety), but I'll not do that in the rest. I am glad to see this information appear in English, I had to work from visual references alone as I don't read Russian.

Clib,

I bet one can use yours for generic WSS infantry, as well.

Possibly you could, though the Russian cartridge box and its belt is quite distinctive. What we may well end up doing is retooling the dolls to produce Western infantry types at a later stage. At the moment we are looking at covering Louis XIv's army from 1689-1714, through that method.