Firearms Engraving in 19th century America by R.L. Wilson

[santos]

I ‘m an avid reader of R.L Wilson , his book ‘colt an American Legend’ is one of my favourites and is always in my night table.
Here’s another Wilson’s interesting article : Firearms engraving in nineteenth century America

https://americansocietyofarmscollec...-Firearms-Engraving-In-Nineteenth-Century.pdf

Page 11 R.L. Wilson wrote: The guns( figure14) are good examples of a major facet of the gun engraver's repertoire- the use of pattern books. Some of the gold inlay motifs appear in two books of patterns published in Germany c. 1840. Copies of these booklets are known not only to have been in Young's shop, but also in Nimschke's. The Ulrichs and others undoubtedly also had them. As an example of their common use, the standing bear on the barrel lug of the center pistol appears also in the Nimschke record book. Other sources for pictorial material were illustrated newspapers, coins, currency and stamps, and any kind of picture book


I’ve been looking for these booklets on internet and by chance I found a copy in the Metropolitan Museum of NY website:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/25115


You can make a comparison with G. Young’s engraving : The MET has some smoke pulls of his engravings : Do you think he used some patterns from the Gustav Ernst booklet ?

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/25106


The MET has also a very nice collection of 19th century engraved firearms :

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/24960


There are hundred of pictures with high definition for studying the engravings, have a look at this colt Walker , The roll dye engraving on the cylinder has a lot of detail when zooming in.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/24844

 

[JJ Roberts]

Santos,Larry wrote many fine books on Colt firearms and many other firearms I have many of his books signed to me. J.J.

 

[Jonathan.Silas]

Thank you for the evenings reading material!

 

[santos]

JJ, you are very lucky to have books signed by the author. Reading this kind of books helped me to learn to read English.

 

[Roger Bleile]

Santos,

German engravers of the 19th century all used similar source material both in their training and practice. Young, Nimschke, Helfricht, Bodenstein, et al. were all originally from the same region of Germany (Thuringia). Over the years, I have seen almost identical animals and game scenes engraved on German guns by a variety of engravers. Copying standard patterns, figures, and scenes was a common practice and not considered a grave sin. Until Ken Hunt began refining his designs and methods, gun engraving was a sort of folk art.