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Old 10-06-19, 02:28 AM
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Hi

Been mulling over this question and I think that while the designs may have been registered to a particular jeweller, C. M. Bay (Cecil Montagu BAY) would have produced the dies for them.

Bay made an awful lot of the Reinforcement badges that we still see today. I was once told by someone who knew him well that, many years after the end of the war, Cecil Bay would take his small boat over to the place he had in the Marlborough Sounds (South Island) and drop kerosene tins full of badges over the side of the boat.....

The same guy told me that he preferred to hire women for the job of cutting out the design as they were more careful than the men who would cheerfully chop off the tips of fernleaves on a design, thereby ruining the badge.

Maybe they were also cheaper to employ?
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