While today everyone pretty much buys everything on Amazon.com or some other online retailer back not all that long ago catalogs provided a way for people to browse products from the comfort of their homes. This interwar catalog from Ellwood Hats Ltd. successors to J. Ellwood & Sons of London shows how sun/pith helmets were marketed.
While the sun/pith helmet remains the iconic headdress of the colonial empires established by the European powers in the second half of the 19th century it wasn’t the only headgear favored by those colonial forces. Indigenous colonial forces utilized a variety of headdress of course, while slouch hats were increasingly favored by various units beginning in the 1880s. One of the more notable variations was the German slouch hat, which largely used in German South West Africa. Continue reading
Figure 1. Top left, an Ellwood & Sons ‘Air Chamber’ military sun helmet, patented 1851, following traditional Indian designs it has a light weight cork construction, is cloth covered and has an ‘air pipe’ comb allowing air to freely circulate in the dome. Top right, a ‘Custodian’ police helmet by Christys & Co ltd (1952), uses almost identical construction methods; a version of this basic design was introduced in 1863 and was the only Custodian type for at least 10 years. Bottom left, a development of the sun helmet; a Christys & Co Ltd, late 1800s Colonial Pattern Sun Helmet. Bottom center, the attached Christys label. Bottom right, a near identically constructed police helmet, again by Christys, offered to the police as an alternative ‘Custodian’ style in the mid 1870s.
The Ellwood and Sons’ “Roman” Air Tube design was among the first British-made sun helmets. Its design came about largely as a result of Great Britain’s expanding empire in India and parts of Africa. It was in many ways an answer to locally made helmets, which were increasingly necessary due to the tropical heat of the subcontinent.
By the time of the Indian Mutiny, which began in 1857, the British had already had a presence in India for well more than 200 years yet it wasn’t until the 1840s – coinciding with the effects of the end of the Little Ice Age in Europe – that serious consideration was given to making uniforms and headdress more comfortable for wear in hot weather.
The use of a sun helmet in the Austro-Hungarian army dates back to the Crete expedition of 1897-98 when a quantity of helmets were specially ordered from a company in Vienna. The need for a sun helmet arose again when Austro-Hungarian troops were sent to Palestine in 1915 to aid the Turkish army. With temperatures up to 120ºF in the summer, these 3,000 troops needed a tropical helmet to replace their wool field caps.
Two Austrian companies were contracted to make helmets, but many other hat makers also stepped up to provide “private purchase helmets.” Continue reading
Since launching this website in early 2012 we’ve encountered numerous helmets that haven’t been largely documented, if documented at all. We’ve come across a number of helmets that can only be described as variations of the classic British Wolseley style helmet. These have included helmets made of sola pith, but recently a far more unusual example was offered for sale on eBay. It is a Canadian-made helmet that appears to be based on the naval helmet that was based on the Wolseley. Continue reading
This is a special study of Japanese tropical helmets by Nick Komiya, and is presented in four parts.
On 10th March 1939, the Patent Office Granted Utility Model Number 264722 to a Shotaro Fujioka of Tokyo for his invention of the flexible liner size adjustment system he developed for the Army’s Type 98 Sun Helmet. Fujioka was an employee of the Army’s Main Clothing Depot. The Army had applied for this on 2nd April 1937, just before sending the prototypes out for testing in Taiwan. Similar to a patent, but simpler to obtain, it is the same as the German Gebrauchsmuster system (when items are marked DRGM). Continue reading