doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com London vs Birmingham engraving

I retired a decade ago and I decided that I would learn to engrave firearms, which took me 3 years to become somewhat competent. My desire to learn to engrave was to be able to embellish the double rifles that I built for myself, instead of sending them to another engraver. I also wanted to be able to restore engraving of English shotguns in my collection as well those that I would be restoring in the future.

The task of learning to engrave beginning at age 67 was one of the most difficult things I ever attempted to do. I learned two major lessons during this time: (1) I could have cut the learning time in half if I had purchased a Steve Lindsey Air Graver when I started learning to engrave (instead of 2 years later)instead of learning to engrave with a hammer and chisel graver; and (2) that there are two different types of engravers (a)ARTIST engravers and (b) CRAFTSMEN engravers (like me). The artist engraver is a person who had great natural drawing and artist skills from birth and the craftsman engraver is a person who had great natural mechanical skills from birth and can very easily master about any trade skills be it mechanical, electrical,and so forth.

Of course there will be some discussion of these two types of engravers, and one comes to my mind (one of the best engravers of the world today) Phil Coggan who is both a master craftsman and a master engraver.

Recently, I met a famous English engraver who still works even though he is now past retirment years of age. As I discussed engraving with him he confirmed my thoughts on artist and craftsman engravers as he said that when he went to work as an apprentice at a London gunmaker he was put to learning to engrave, because that was what the gunshop need in an apprentice at that time. He further stated that he not previously studied art at school or had any what he would say as real artistic skills beforehand.

Learning to engrave has brought to be me an ability to go right to the heart of examining a firearm engraving that I did not have before. An ability to examine the engraving skills of the original engraver as well has his/her style.

As a result one of the things that I see in engraving of English shotguns of the past that much engraving was done to cover up the surface very quickly and if the engraving work is examined under magnifications it can best be described as impressionist engraving. The details of the scrolls are not "done that well" ( I take this term from the late master engraver, Lynton McKenzie who like to use it). And as Lyndon states in his first of three engraving lessons videos, the engravers were not paid very well in those days and they had to produce one or more complete engraved shotguns per week.

Today many engravers use a microscope to engrave and can produce the finest realistic engraving the world has ever seen. At 78 years of age I could not engrave without a microscope.

So where am I going in all this writing. To my mind a Birmingham gun or a London gun was engraved in the style, detail and skill that the customer paid for. If it was a fourth or third quality gun then it was likely that the engraving would have been done by an apprentice engraver in his later stages of his apprenticeship. Even best quality guns would have the trigger guards and screws done by the apprentices' and the action engraving done by the masters. Ken Hunt, now in his 80's says this was still the case in Kell's workshop when Ken went there in the 1950's. According to what I remember Ken saying was that a best quality gun coming out of Kell's workshop would have the work of several masters on it and that Kell himself would do the animal engraving as well as some of the other engraving that he liked to do. And of course the gun would have had some of Ken's work as an apprentice on it as well. Pull out your Kell engraved guns and look at them under a magnification to see if you can pick out the difference.

Learning to engrave has taught me to be able to quickly look at a English shotgun and see the two or three different people who engraved the gun, whether they were London, Birmingham or elsewhere based.

Also to my mind (and to Doug Tate for example) Birmingham gunmakers were able to build a London pattern best quality side lock ejector equal to what was built in London. Therefore there must have been engravers in Birmingham up to that task as well. Of course, I know that the likes of Holland & Holland and other London gunmakers had Birmingham best quality guns sent to them from time to time in the white to be engraved and finished in the London shops. Just like Purdey or Holland will ship a gun over to Wales today for Coggan to engrave, or to Italy for that matter.

Just recently on another website about double rifles was posted the photos of two Holland & Holland (likely Birmingham made ) double rifle made originally for a Indian royal. I am including a link to that post so that you can scroll down and view the action engraving of these rifles. They have some of the most interesting engraving styles that I encountered on guns/rifles of that period. Closely examine the backs and centers of the scrolls and you will see work added to the scrolls that you will have never seen before on any guns. Wow, I would like to know who engraved these rifles and what gave him the idea of this style. Was it the customer or whom?

http://forums.nitroexpress.com/showflat....;gonew=1#UNREAD

Is Ron Collings still doing engraving work? Contact info?

bushveld,
Thanks for that excellent post. I have come to appreciate engraving more with each passing year.

Let me repost this from the Reilly line: Interesting thoughts: (Bushvelt, are you Highvelt?)

this is an interesting comment from the site "Engravers Cafe" on engravers from the 19th century by a poster "Highveldt," which is relevant to the above discussion on Reilly finishing his own guns. It was a comment on Terry Weiland's article on engraving in which Terry sort of said engraving was really used as a type of "stove paint."

https://books.google.td/books?id=de9XBAA...int&f=false

The chat was funny but very informative:
http://www.engraverscafe.com/archive/index.php/t-10485.html?s=cfbe6b81099c03ea2457b7cbdbf3f47e

Engraving is like....stove paint? I don't think that is what he said. Who knows what a so called gun writer ever means, but here is what he said: "The truth is, a bulino-engraved gun will never look as good as the day it comes out of its protective box. Every scratch and bump will deface the engraving until it looks like a flyspecked lithograph in a cheap saloon. At which point a coat of stove paint might not be a bad idea."

I do not care much for Mr. Weiland's writings, even though I have some of his books. Weiland quotes some of Mr. Greener's opinions about the gun trade in this article--a person I do not think I would have liked in his day. Although Mr. Greener was not found guilty of stealing the Anson & Deeley action design in court, many tradesmen of his day as well as I in this day think that he did steal it.

Weiland raises a point about the changes in valuation of engraving on a gun in UK. I am a English gun restorer and only a learner engraver (in order to repair some engraving on guns I restore). Engraving and engravers were just another craft/trade in the time of the E.M. Riley shotgun Weiland references. For example: E.J. Churchill sends a note and a set of barrels over to the excellent engraver Mr. Sumner on the morning of March 18, 1904 with the note reading: "Barrels of 1398 (gun number) To name (engrave the Churchill name and address), rough rib & engrave it these must be here tonight as they have to be blacked & go away tomorrow morning certain. Please Oblige; signed E.J. Churchill" From this note we can assume the Barrel blacker worked all night to get the barrels blacked for the customer gun to be shipped, as it usually takes 5 or 6 blacking cycles for a barrel to be completed--the blacker probably did not finish until late the next day.

In most shops, including the London best shops of Purdey, Holland, Boss, Stephen Grant and so forth engravers earned about the same as a head barrel maker, stocker and actioner. In 1875 Freedrick Beesley (later inventor of the Beesley spring opener action and which has been used by Purdey ever since they purchased the rights from Beesley in 1880) made 4 pounds six pence for the month, while J. Mace Sr., Engraver made about the same. During the same month J. Lucas, Purdey's famous engraver who developed the Purdey house style of engraving made the astounding amount of 8 pounds---This was twice the amount of wages to paid to any other Purdey craftsman.

In March 1936 at Purdey's J. Lovett, Engraver was paid 3 pounds, 8 shilling and 4 pence, while the famous Purdey actioner Ernest D. Lawrence was paid 3 pounds, 5 shillings.

However at the end of November 1952 Ernest D. Lawrence was earning 12 pounds, 9 shillings as an actioner and the young apprentice Ken Hunt, Engraver earned 3 pounds 5 shillings.

We all should rejoice that the demand in best quality English, Italian, German, Belguim and other shotguns (primarily demand driven by American buyers) has changed the fate and earnings of not only engravers, but the skilled gunmaker trades.

These are just some rambling thoughts of an old man who loves fine guns, mostly fine English guns.

Very interesting post, bushveld, with an interesting perspective. Thanks for posting that.



One minor correction, it's Lynton McKenzie, with a "t", not a "d". I was pleased and fortunate to have been able to spend some time with Lynton at the NMLRA national matches in Friendship, IN for a couple years before his passing. He was an avid m/l shooter and hunter.

SRH

Stan;

Corrected.

Argo44;

You are astute.

No, I think that is just a house style done by more modestly priced 'trade' engravers. It fills the space with little work and was probably a very economic way of finishing a gun 'down to a price'.

This is an example of the Kell style on a Blanch backaction I recently acquired:

[img:left]https://scontent.fltn2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v...amp;oe=5D844016[/img]

Toby thanks for posting that photo, it clarifies the situation. It also confirms I have cheap tastes in engraving, those creeping vines are my favorite style.

Beautiful gun Toby!