doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Trade Label Authenticity

This is the only "correct" label I've ever seen for a cased Darne:



It is gold leafed and embossed. It is also a bit delicate. I took perhaps a dozen when I was in St Etienne, as the Paris office had been long closed, at that point, and nobody wanted them. I have seen paper labels that were reproduced for Darne guns, but, they aren't anything like this. It would be expensive to reproduce.
I've given a few of these away, over the years, and only have this one, left.


I would guess this label was used from the 1930s until sometime in the 1970s.

A factory cased Darne is tough to find. For the most part, the factory cases were Italian, and supplied from the Paris office.


Best,
Ted

Nice label Ted....very nice and great history. Wonder what the Darne Saint-Etienne labels looked like?

If you'll take a look at the EM Reilly line, below, 12th page....you'll see a history of factory labels for EM Reilly from pre-1847 to 1898. You can find Reilly label reproductions on the internet but they will not necessarily be authentic for your gun if you have an EM Reilly since the labels changed over the years. It took some doing to compile those posts. I'd suspect one could do the same thing for other labels but again it is a little labor intensive.

I'll provide this example from the case of Obendorf's Reilly S/N 33950. The gun was likely serial numbered circa 1896. The case label (and I can's read all of it), has 315 New Oxford street. It does not appear to have the other branches 502 New Oxford Street or Rue Scribe. 315 New Oxford St. opened in 1859 and the labels usually had the 502 New Oxford St. main address. In 1868 the label added Rue Scribe and it appeared religiously on the labels for the next 14 years. In 1881 Oxford street was renumbered and 315 became 16 and 502 became 277 although labels sometimes continued to have the old address. In 1886 Rue Scribe closed and the labels had the new numbers and no Paris address. Thus it looks like the replacement Reilly label in the case would date from 1859 to 1868 (though I haven't seen its like - it is a logical conclusion).




The following label would be the authentic one for Obendorf's Reilly case:

Argo,
My educated guess is these are the labels that went on all the Darnes, in the era I posted, at any branch.
I was told carriage was the reason the cases went to Paris from Italy. Just easier. There was also a sales office in Lyon at one time. We might assume each office got a different address label case, but, I've seen no evidence that is true.
Few folks ordered a case. There likely was no need for the expense of producing multiple address trade labels.
My R15, late 1970s vintage, was a gun that was ordered new, with a hard case. There was no label in the case. The case was fitted to a Darne, and wouldn't have worked with most other guns.

Best,
Ted