Chris Flaherty
Volume 1: Turkish Army uniforms in the Crimean War Period, and Volume 2, which covers the Turkish Navy, the Contingents, Additional Cavalry Units and the Romanian Army, both acknowledge as its key source of information, the research by Charles A. Norman, a well-known British military artist and researcher. Norman’s work transliterated original observations, illustrations and notes made by two Crimean War Commentators: Joseph-Emile Vanson, and Constantin Guys. Constantin Guys was a reporter, and illustrator for The Illustrated London News, and in 1854 was assigned to the Crimea to produce drawings of wartime scenes which could be turned into engravings for news. Constantin Guys documented various Turkish uniforms, with his description of each scene, written in English on the back of the drawing or below it. The approach taken in this volume has been to overlay Norman’s original interpretations, combining this with other period written descriptions, illustrations, paintings, and photographs taken at the time, hopefully getting a closer interpretation of the Turkish Army uniforms seen in the Crimea. Many of the library and museum collections provide a significant amount of information. However, much of this is not accurately dated. The dating of these often slip by two or three years, and up to a decade earlier or later. The illustrations presented in both volumes are based on this combination of materials.
