Questions about ribbon making

[VonPeter]

I have searched this forum but i cant find anything about how the all the different ribbons was made.

Did the award manufacturers buy all the ribbons they needed to the particular medals they manufactured themself or did they buy uncoloured ribbons and dye the ribbons them self?
I would assume that the easyest would be to buy rolls of pre-dyed ribbons from a large maker but member RonR wrote in an old tread "I have been told that a brick red color on a Knights Cross ribbon is often found from the Klein & Quenzer Company".
And if some of the bigger award-firms made the ribbons for everyone to buy from, do we know which ones made what ribbons?

I have been curious about this questions for some time and now i´ve decided to finally ask for some answers.

So any information about ribbon making from start to finished product is appreciated.

[Chris Taylor]

From what I understand this depended on the size of the company and what awards they primarily focused on.

A company such as K&Q, which did focus on making a lot of Knights Crosses, may have made there own ribbon or had it subcontracted out to a specific fabric or ribbon manufacturer.

After the manufacturers you had the individual award shops, where the average soldat might go to get a duplicate award or have a ribbon/medal bar made.

To my knowledge, most of these shops just bought the ribbon on rolls, which also came as the West Wall ribbon pictured below does.
This is pretty much the way it is still done today. These individual shops might buy the same award ribbon someplace else, or from the manufacturers themselves.

Hope this helped a little!

[VonPeter]

Thanks for the response Chris, and yes, it helped.

It was pretty much as I suspected, a couple of big ribbon manufacturers selling to everybody, but some large award-firms may have done some manufacturing themself.

Btw. nice picture

[Silesien]

A renowned maker of ribbons for German medals was the firm Karl Loy Bandweberei GmbH of Munich.

[VonPeter]

A renowned maker of ribbons for German medals was the firm Karl Loy Bandweberei GmbH of Munich.

Thanks for the info, it seemes that they are still up and running.

- History
The Karl Loy Bandweberei GmbH company was established in 1914 by Karl Loy and his son, also called Karl, and since then has been producing ribbons for student associations. Medal ribbons and carriers, decoration ribbons, horse ribbons and other products for tournaments and clubs were later added to the product range.
In 1970, Goldina Loy GmbH & Co KG was set up to produce gift ribbons and since then this company has been one of the mainstays of the group. Today both companies are managed in the fourth generation by Bernhard and Till Hackenberg.

http://www.karl-loy.de/