Outstanding engraving, all of it. Since Ken mentioned the process we went through, I thought I would comment just a bit. My initial thought was that in trying to commission an engraver, it seemed like the work just came back to me..."find pictures and examples of what you want". Ken's advise was spot on, not just in that it allowed me to accurately convey to him what aspects of engraving and content I like, but in actually helping me rigorously resolve what really are my tastes and desires for this project.
Once started, I actually found it to be great fun and a challenge to look for dog and games scenes on the net...everything from pics of very old Outdoor Life and Field and Stream magazine covers to modern game artists. Same thing for scroll...if you are any good with a search engine, there are legions of examples out there, with different styles and approaches to to scroll work.
This took much longer than I thought. I believe that over six months I collected well over a 100 images related in some way. I think I cut that down to about 35 pages or so in my first meeting with Ken and then, along with Eightbore and my friend Berle, we resolved the example art work to the few pages needed. The "sleep on it for a few weeks" recommendation was also well offered, it seems like my desires cystallized over the time I was NOT actually thinking about it, so when I looked at the art again I seemed to be informed by a more confident view of my own tastes.
Along the way, both Ken and I stressed to each other (we rather preached to each other's choir) the need to provide the engraver with sufficient freedom to ensure balance in the composition, the availability of freedom in artistic design for the engraver, the need to maintain some elegance and not pick one of everything to put on the gun, etc.
I my view, once the engraving is started, I have no real role. The fun and creative expression part to my experience was the selection of art and back and forth between Ken and I. I believe in this process you not only inform an engraver, but in this case formed a friendship of high value.
I better get to work...no time to review this post, hope it makes sense.
Ken, please tell Miss Julie I said hello. Also, Ernest's trip to my shoot, the NorthSouth, and his subsequent trip to the Great Eastern the next week seemed to go very well. Ernest is one heck of a gunsmith and a very fine fellow to meet in person. He and I cemented our friendships and everyone else seemed to rave about both his work and his obvious personal virtues.
