doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Overpowered by engraving

That's a good take, Chuck. I was offered the pick of any gun as a gift by the widow of a friend. The glassed mahogany gun cabinet covered a wall, perhaps 20-feet long. All the names were there, every kind of engraving. Charlie built highways. I chose the plainest gun, a Parker hammer 16ga 0 frame. Engraving often enhances a gun, as my Francotte, Sauer and Elsie. Too much is ostentation to me.

Form follows how much stuff you gotta stuff in where and how you feel about the luxury of elbow room. Emil Flues took "boxlock" to heart. Big walls for big scrawls! Not to worry Treblig; LG's old Remmys are just as boxy.

jack

Actually King, yes, my refrigerator is decorated with odds and ends as are most refrigerators I would imagine. I think if given the choice, most people would rather have something a bit dressed up than plain. I'm not arguing that guns need to engraved to be beautiful. Quite the contrary. A gun can be very artful and still be plain (I think my Lefever H is a good case in point. Beautiful lines, beautiful wood, I love looking at it, but it's plain), but the idea that function over form is paramount just doesn't square with reality in my opinion. Show me a house that doesn't have at least some art of some kind on the walls. We humans like to look at nice things. It's our nature.

Jack, you noticed that also!!! I used the term 'Gamegun' on that Ithaca/Flues thread and all of a sudden Lowell starts this discussion!!!

Decoration is about personalization sometimes. The stuff on Mark's fridge pertains to Mark; the stuff on mine to me. But it's all personal ephemera; the snapshots yellow, those awkwardly charming crayon drawings fall off; the pizza joint on the magnet has been out of business for 16 yrs. A very good thing imo. I wouldn't want Larry Hagman's mug or mine on a gun; the obstinate persistance of the image of the personal, the contemporaneous, and the trivial doesn't please in the long run.

I've never really understood chambered nautili, rose&scroll, acanthus leaves on guns. Something those income-supplementing watch engravers knew how to do perhaps. I think I understand the dogs and birds--timeless "moment" of the hunter enshrined and commemorated. Dog on point; bird flushed; shot not taken YET. After the shot it's all tired dogs, feathers and bones, meat in the pot. In satiety we look back at that happiest moment. The saddest engraving "snapshot" I've ever seen is the "transition" from bird to flower pot of the Citori "Golden Clays" pattern. Not much different than instructions for writing a letter of resignation.

jack

So, Ken Hurst. How hard would it be to beautify one of my SXSs by engraving a picture of Hillary Clinton on one side and a mad cow on the other?..............Denny Crane

Same subject both sides, Jimmy?

jack

"Show me a house that doesn't have at least some art of some kind on the walls. We humans like to look at nice things. It's our nature."

Yes, it is our nature, Mark. We're a family of painters and writers.

For the most part, I like my American guns stewpot plain!
...and not middle management - I have arrived.

Lowell,
Everybody should like something. I think you may have 'reverse snobbery' syndrome. It's curable by spending money on yourself for expensive, ornate things.

Personally, I am not particularly attracted to the classic rose-n-scroll or other non-descript curly scratching, the Germanic deeply relief engraved rabbits pigs and stags. But, I've seen exceptional examples of some that I found attractive.

I am attracted to 'game scene' type engraving with limited scroll border work. Bulino style game scenes also draw my attention, although I have no guns with this style. The fact is, I have only a handful of guns with engraving other than some factory border stuff, and most are pretty mundane stuff.