Canadian or English Made?

[Bill A]

For years, collectors have used several guidelines to determine the provenance of cloth insignia. One factor is the stlye of embroidery used to make the title or formation patch. In turn this is used to determine the country of manufacture. Where was this title made?

[Raymond Gilbert]

Bill:
The embroidery looks British but on uncommon occasions one can find this type of stitching in flashes from Canada.
I think the Elgin was solely a Canada unit for training purposes. I recall that it was an armoured unit overseas and so might have a different title. So your patch could be Canadian made if my memory is correct on the unit's history.

R.

[48th]

Hi Bill,

It looks like you have a nice sealed pattern there.
I have some Canadian made Provost Corps flashes that have similar stitching. The back would tell a lot more of the story.

[rillette]

Here's a link to an older thread on the Elgin titles:

http://www.britishbadgeforum.com/for...ead.php?t=8467

Would there be sealed pattern examples for UK SWW made titles?

I'm certainly no expert, but it does appear to have the looser british type of stitching, but I'm thinking that there must be a catch!

Cheers,
François

[Bill A]

Not really a trick question, but rather post to clarify the CCW (Collector's Conventional Wizdum) about bias embroidery. There were machines in Canada and the UK that stitched on the bias. As well, companies in Canada had machines that stitched on the horizontal. Most but not all Canadian made titles appear to have the horizontal stitching. The ELGIN title has the British pattern stitching, BUT the pattern was sealed in May 1942, long before they went overseas. Another observation. The Canadian made titles appear to have used plain block style font, while UK titles were often done in derivatives of modern Gothic. Note the plain block "G" in the sealed pattern vs the modern gothic "G" in the linked thread.
The Elgins were moved around a bit early in the war, finally becoming the First Canadian Army armoured delivery regiment. In that role, the regiment was split up and some squadrons served in Italy and the others in NW Europe. They were first line reinforcements for both personnel and tanks. Serving in this capacity meant that there was a wide range of insignia made for them. Armlets with Elgin Regiment titles over the First Cdn Army formation patch were worn on summer uniforms in Italy.

[Luc]

As a rule of thumb, the angle of the stitching on WW2 British made shoulder titles is /// and not \\\ what we see here. But otherwise it could very well be a British made badge.