For some time now, I have been attempting to find out - not heresay but proof - as to how the camouflage was applied to the Denison smock during the war. I have tried every institution in the UK including at-a-distance the National Archives. No obvious documents exist online at the NA and I was unable to get to London.
This began on a Canadian forum. I was a bit too quick to state that it was hand applied. Other posters then convinced me that it was screen printed. However since this debate, I have been informed by a few in-the-know with screen printing that to reproduce so many different brush strokes on material would be vertually impossible. To date I have yet to see a smock with the pattern repeated. I have also compared hundreds of photos of smocks and every brush stroke is different. This would be impossible - in my mind- to create by screen printing or mechanical printing of the time. There would eventually be a repeat to the pattern as the largest screen or drum would create at most a printed piece of material 5-6 feet square. You would obviously then get repetition.
The ones in support of screen printing stated it would simply take too long to do it by hand. However I have been told that to print several colours in the fashion they had during the war on such small sheets of material, would also probably be very difficult to achieve and take just as long as hand application.
Then there are films of textile industry during the war brought to my attention in Australia showing hundreds of women hand applying camouflage to material.
So I would like to ask if anyone on this forum can produce absolute proof either way? I have heard every opinion, but no one has yet made any substantiated comments. I find it interesting that it has been such a mystery. Even what info I could find on Denison production only states that it will be dyed with vat dyes in the approved pattern - nothing else?
If you have the info, would love to hear it.
This began on a Canadian forum. I was a bit too quick to state that it was hand applied. Other posters then convinced me that it was screen printed. However since this debate, I have been informed by a few in-the-know with screen printing that to reproduce so many different brush strokes on material would be vertually impossible. To date I have yet to see a smock with the pattern repeated. I have also compared hundreds of photos of smocks and every brush stroke is different. This would be impossible - in my mind- to create by screen printing or mechanical printing of the time. There would eventually be a repeat to the pattern as the largest screen or drum would create at most a printed piece of material 5-6 feet square. You would obviously then get repetition.
The ones in support of screen printing stated it would simply take too long to do it by hand. However I have been told that to print several colours in the fashion they had during the war on such small sheets of material, would also probably be very difficult to achieve and take just as long as hand application.
Then there are films of textile industry during the war brought to my attention in Australia showing hundreds of women hand applying camouflage to material.
So I would like to ask if anyone on this forum can produce absolute proof either way? I have heard every opinion, but no one has yet made any substantiated comments. I find it interesting that it has been such a mystery. Even what info I could find on Denison production only states that it will be dyed with vat dyes in the approved pattern - nothing else?
If you have the info, would love to hear it.
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