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

No ,time was everything the gun was split up between engravers so a best Dixon or purdey could be completed in a few days.if you were paying for realistic game birds that's what you got if not you got a stick smoking a cigarette.sumner or Kell or Tomlinson or morris did game scenes most of the time others did scroll and basic animals.it takes a lot more effort to do a nicely finished bird or squirrel then flying turnup.

Definitely a Birmingham made gun, in Edwinson Green’s work shop and Birmingham Proofed but was it engraved in London or more probably Birmingham?

I showed it to Paul Roberts recently and he said “Kell?”.

It was ordered in 1894 , the year Harry Kell started his apprenticeship in London to his father Henry.

Frustratingly the very detailed Order in Green’s records makes no mention of the engraving or even the Tudor Roses chiselled into the fences - clearly a special order for the customer Tudor Crawshay.

Parabola, thanks. What a fine example. I have had a couple of Bonehills that had stocks treated that way. The fences on you gun are fine, but unusual.

Not the best of photographs but a Green gun I saw at Bonhams 20 years ago with almost identical engraving but differently carved fences.

Thanks to Goggle I was able to look it up and it is No. 5772, one of a pair ordered the same year 1894 by Sir. S. Crawley-Boevey Bart.

I looked them up in Green’s records but once again no mention of who did the engraving although there is a reference to the Whitworth barrels being from “Kilby” (Thomas Kilby , Barrelmaker of Steelhouse Lane )