Sorry KK, I just don't think you can so easily separate engravers from their contemporary art. Typically, decorative arts (carving, wallpapers, etc.) are influenced by other artistic styles, rather than the other way around. Look at jewelers and jewelry engraving - their work usually reflects other artistic influence (Paloma Picasso for instance). In this case, most gun engravers would have been mimicing the most obvious examples available to them.
In some instances, they were engraving a design supplied by the customer, who may have used a hunting print as a model.
You can actually find Art Deco shotgun engraving:
ART DECO - Art Deco was a popular international art design movement from 1925 until 1939, affecting the decorative arts. ... As hand engraved decoration, Art Deco is rarely found on firearms or custom made knives and is somewhat more popular among jewelry engravers....
IIRC, some of the graded Ithacas had a very art deco (influenced) engraving style, which was executed very well.
But, as to the style of gun engraving, I think it needs be remembered that the demographic and tastes of gun buyers and what they will spring for, will dictate what the engravers are told to engrave and, by extension, what we see surviving today. I think it is fair to say that a substantial proportion of gun buyers, particularly in the higher-wealth demographic, are tradition-bound and therefore conservative in their tastes in art and otherwise. On the one hand, when they first come to realization, new artistic styles are often quite upsetting to the money people. I recall, by way of example, that Stravinsky's works (now recognized as genius) caused riots when premiered. On the other hand, the people who can appreciate new styles are often too broke to buy them. You're not going to see garret-dwelling starving artists whose genius is recognized by the market thirty years in the future (to the profit of the patrons who bought their work for a song when it was new) going out and dropping a pile of money on a best shotgun engraved in a style to match the avant garde of that day.
Answer me this: if you had the money, and as well done as this is (and it's world-class), would you buy it, carry it, shoot it? Would you go for something like it, in a similar style though not as extensively, expensively or exuberantly done?
http://picasaweb.google.com/117818889234...GravureEnCours#more
https://picasaweb.google.com/117818889234850313475/PhotosDu410Termine#The patron explained his thinking and collaboration with the artist
http://www.16ga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=90872&sid=6bf916bb857cd10c214cede94378d021 I'm willing to bet that a lot of you would get turned off by it enough that you would pass on buying it, in favor of something more realistic and traditional, like English rose-and-scroll. And, if the market won't support it, it won't appear unless someone makes and pays for a special order.
Fine double shotguns are, at base, a mark of membership in the bourgoisie or elite demographics of society and reflect the tastes of those demographics - conservative, reserved, evergreen (they'll have to be sold some day). Not cutting edge.
