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Well boys, here's the lowdown on the caps. We own a dozen or so original late war contract caps, most found in costume shops 30-40 years ago and of course never issued at war's end. Some years back we undertook to replicate these 1864 regulation caps to offer the mainstream community (and our own Minnesota recruits) a reasonable alternative between $29.99 garbage and the $125 hand made replicas.
We purchased bolts of fabric here and shipped them to NE Pakistan for hand manufacture, based on a "perfect" prototype we patterned ourselves. Our pattern, material and prototype combined with the Pakies' cheap but experienced labor was intended to produce very good hand made replicas at a decent price. Like Dale Jarnargin - who despite his early pattern flaws, must be given full credit for putting our new Union Army into wool back in the 1970s - we hoped to improve the mainstream hobby.
The cap project more or less worked, but with us eating the usual mistakes and aberrations. And yes, we do have an early prototype with a genuine snake skin sweatband - any takers out there for a real conversation piece around the stitch counting campfire? Because of sizing difficulties, nit picking, postage increases, etc. we no longer offer the caps except for a couple of tiny ones left on hand.
It was an interesting project with the best of intentions, but I think Wendy is now content to stick with shoulder straps and mess kettles!
Stephen Osman
, If I would have known at the time of my purchase that they were made in N.E Pakistan it would have swayed my decission to buy one.
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