RFC Gold Wire badge
 

This of interest to anyone?

Hello kurt, welcome to the Forum. Your account is active and open for replies.

Odd looking badge, from the photographs, I would think it is not contemporary to the period that the RFC was extant.

It looks like the wings badge worn on RFC full dress (and possibly mess dress, but I’m unsure) from 1912. The style of the uniform was very similar to that of the AOC i.e. blue with scarlet facings, but no headdress was authorised other than the coloured universal forage cap.

Hi
These wings appear pretty modern , and are not period.
Regards
Steve

On what basis? They are not the usual worsted thread wings worn on service dress. They are bullion wire wings intended for full dress. I imagine that few were ever bought, they would have been a prewar item with no one needing them after 1914. As full dress private purchase items there would also have been minor manufacturers variations between the different military outfitters. This was a period of handcrafted manufacture with embroidery companies producing badges to a design, but with inevitable small differences between individual embroiderers.

Both the materials used and the manufacture post date the period the RFC was extant.
The flying badge worn by officers in Home Service Full Dress was gilt on copper or silver gilt rather than embroidered.

Hi and thank you to everyone for all of your replies. I have looked at it under a jewellers loupe and it definitely looks like some kind of gold plated wire as you can see where some of it has worn off I will try to get better pictures.

I’m aware of the gilding metal wings to which you refer Frank, but I’ve seen bullion wire RFC wings in both, the Museum of Army Flying (I was based at SAAvn) and the RAF Museum at Hendon. Perhaps they were worn on mess dress, and or blue patrol uniform, but they certainly existed. In the large group photo that I enclose they appear dull (because they are tarnished) at bottom centre. Also a single one from a collection with good provenance in the US Space and Air Museum.

None of the badges you show are remotely like the badge which is the subject of this thread.
I would say, just from the photograph, that the single one actually post dates the period that the RFC was extant.
Regarding Mess dress, a half size mercurial gilt on copper or silver badge was worn, regarding Patrol Dress, a full size bullion badge was worn.

Isn’t that a full size badge that was originally posted? I had thought that it was. I agree that the various bullion wire badges appear different, but that was quite normal for all bullion badges to have variations when there were different embroiderers involved. That is the case even now, although less so in those companies where computer controlled stitching programmes are utilised.

No, it appears not to be, given the photographs, but, the materials used are clearly very different when compared with the badges you show in your previous post.

If it’s not full sized then I don’t know what it is, but different materials are not significant for that time. Just different embroiderers.

To be quite honest I do think that anyone who actually collects badges would be of the opinion that the way a particular badge is made and the materials used, is in fact, of very great significance, in particular, when avoiding spurious examples.
I would say, based solely upon the photographs you show in post nine, that the bullion embroidered badges are all of pre 1939 manufacture and that there is very little in the way of variation with regards to both the method and the materials used.