A Unique 'Sealed Pattern' Cap Badge of the Fusilier Brigade 16.9 1966

Inspectorate of Stores and Clothing . Since the early XVIII Century, it was common practice for all European armies to approve items of clothing and accoutrements for each regiment in a formal session of the appropriate War Office `Dress Committee`.
At these sessions, an example of each item would be deposited with the Committee, signed, sealed and certified as being the `Sealed Pattern`, against which all items worn in future would be compared. At future inspections of each regiment, any item showing variations from the norm would be amended or scrapped. since the start of the eighteenth century a band of officers of the British Army (or other responsible persons) has approved the quality and finish of all items of military clothing, it was then sealed with the wax of the Board of Ordnance or other Government seal to be recognised as the standard to be kept by the manufacturers. There is valuable evidence to be seen on these patterns because they also carry the date of approval and obsolescence of each item. Unfortunately, that system has not proved to be infallible. In 1841, all sealed patterns accumulated since the beginning of the eighteenth century, were destroyed in a fire at the Tower of London. No secondary store existed and thus all patterns encompassing Marlborough?s campaigns, the Seven Years War, the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic Wars were lost.

Code: 21683