doublegunshop.com - home Forums Thread Like Summary - London vs Birmingham engraving

Was curious to see if there really is a difference? I have read �done in the London style� or �Birmingham made, based on the engraving �. Is there really a difference? I would think if you paid enough any B�ham gun could easily be a �London Gun�. Any insight or pics would be great!

Here's a boxlock , I think marked as Henry Morris the maker. [picture picked off internet] Quite a bit of similarity compared to the Edwin Smith sidelock engraving. Thanks to gunman for his thoughts on Henry Morris. I'm sure he has handled many with Morris engraving. Both the Edwin Smith gun and the Henry Morris gun are actually quite rare as both of these men made or engraved guns usually for marking by others.

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.

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

Yes ,yes she did:)

A little known or largely forgotten Birmingham engraver Henry Morris has been overlooked . Morris finished guns that bore his name as well as engraving for both London and Birmingham trades .
He was apprenticed to either Webley or W&C Scott shortly prior to their amalgamation .He served in WW1 and after set up an engraving shop with I'm told places for 10 engravers .He empolyed as well as taking on apprentices .His last apprentice being taken on in 1959.
He was according to his last apprentice another largely " unknown" man of great skill IMO ,whom I have been asked not to name , told me he was very inventive and established several patterns that became fairly standard .He also did game scenes with very fine detailed work .
He was working certainly into the 1970's .
Boothroyd was I understand a friend and was planning to write a book about him , but this sadly never came to pass .

Brent, your Mr. Jones is likely the Jones whose sign in pictured next to Lewis in previous text. Greener was their neighbor. I'll have to dig out my Greener file. As I recall the factory letter on my Monarch Imperial listed several engravers and other finishers who worked on the gun.
A bit later I looked at my factory letter and see---
Smoother-Watson
Polisher-Jones [paid 12 shillings]
Action filer-Camm [paid 50 shillings]
Name engraver - Stokes [paid 4 shillings]
Game and scroll engraving-Perry [paid 50 shillings]
Barrel blacker-Fletcher
There are six other workers listed for the gun, also

It took 20 shillings to make a pound.
This work was done in 1900.

Here is what Camm, Stokes , and Perry worked on. Mr. Jones, the polisher, would have had a relatively tough job on this one.

Here's a Webley & Scott 16 bore (1946). Can anyone tell me about this engraving? It's a lot different than the other Webley's I've owned or seen.

A fair criticism that has been laid about some of the engraving on older , thats pre 1900 guns , is that birds in game scenes look like bottles with wings .But it is a fair comment to say that the only pheasants and partridge many of these men had seen were those hanging up in the butchers window .

Access to books wasn't guaranteed to engravers in 19th century England, and piecework is how most engravers were paid. The Kell shop is credited with bringing more life to the game scenes, but other engravers were developing more life like renditions. Sumner, WW Greener, WC Scott and Kell produced work that buyers were willing to pay for and to add a distinction and value to there individual products. There was a definite change in the trade around the 1890's. Just my opinion.

One guy letters, one game scenes,one guy scrolls .some company's had individual pieces ,bottom metal,trigger plate, action body lettering,and game scenes so they could get work out really quick.

Mc, I remember a story of John Dickson sending a gun down on the train to Sumner. It was sent on a Thursday or so and they were asked to get it back early in the next week. I'm sure that various parts of the gun went to several people.

Gunman , a very true fact indeed .
I am a long time friend of John & Brian Wiseman , Brian was an apprentice of Henry Morris . Interestingly although both of us are in our late 70's Brian ALWAYS refers to Henry Morris as Mr. Morris because that is all he was ever allowed to address the MASTER as .
Interestingly, many of the Birmingham artisans NEVER saw a live animal , I will always remember travelling by train from Birmingham to Wolverhampton and as we approached Tipton on the outskirts of Birmingham some children let out a loud scream and rushed to the window , I looked up to see what had caused the commotion , it was a horse beside the canal and the first time the children had seen a real live horse.

This is an old set of posts, but it seems to relate to my Edwin Smith gun and Henry [Harry] Morris . Both Edwin Smith and Mr. Morris had their shops tucked into a rear location of St. Mary's Row in Birmingham. An internet search seems to match the style used by Mr. Morris and the scenes on the Edwin Smith gun. Other names found nearby at this location and similarly engraved were a Bissell gun, G. E. Lewis and Sons, and one marked with Henry Morris' name. The Greener office was just next door.











This photo is curtesy of Roy Smith, who took the photo in 1978. St. Mary's street is the location.

Nice gun. Somebody could afford the good stuff when they went gun shopping.

Best,
Ted

Not really, but it’s here.

I think that engraving is well above the level of what was standard on a post war boxlock. Some English gun makers were short on talent after the war, and it showed in the guns they produced for years.

Enjoy.

Best,
Ted

Also, just because an engraver could do nice scroll didn't mean he could replicate birds accurately. I don't believe it took a good engraver any longer to do a well executed game bird than it took a poor engraver to do a flying turnip. It's not always about the time spent, it's mostly about the artistic ability of the engraver himself, IMO.

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.