There’s plenty of established engraving talent and up-and-coming talent coming up. The engraving program at Emporia State (arguably the finest engraving school/program in the Americas) is usually packed full of students. Young adults and even some older adults learning the craft. Emporia State has no problem enrolling students.
I think some of the slow responses to these types of threads is that some folks get tired of posting who they use for this and that because just after a little while of doing that…..when they make the call to get some work done, all of the sudden their favorite, go-to smith is backed up and can’t take on their job.
There might be “plenty”, but, the trouble I’ve noticed is damn few of the plenty can engrave at a level that I want to buy. I have never seen an example of gamescene engraving that surpassed what Winston Churchill was capable of. Never. Geoffroy could look at engraving that was done 100 years ago, pull a couple of paper rubbings off of it, study them and be laying down an exact duplicate of that style to a screw that was munged or some other repair. He had his own style, as well, that was very, very good.
That guy isn’t on every street corner.
The engraving school in St. Etienne was busy enough to offer night classes, and I attended a single class, along with Jerome, an apprentice at the time, but, a graduate of the gun making school in Liege. All he wanted to do was be able to fill in engraving on repairs, and he was working his ass off to attempt that. This was the guy who eventually invented a single trigger for the Darne gun. There was an assortment of French housewives studying as well, mostly looking for a way to pick up income while working at home. Mr. Pitiot, MOF, but, retired by then, taught the class, and gave me a quick entrance exam, handing me a 2X2 square of flat steel and telling me to cut two straight lines of equal depth, end to end, centered and intersecting in the middle. Everybody took that test, and when I finished and showed it to him, he wasn’t impressed. Not sure I’d have been invited back to study with him.
There were plenty of people in the class, but, I didn’t see anything that night that struck me as art. It was going to be years before anybody did that, and not all of them were going to be able to do it, no matter how hard they tried.
If it was easy, it wouldn’t be so expensive.
Best,
Ted
