doublegunshop.com - home Forums Thread Like Summary - Edgar Perks, Pt. 2

Hoping for some opinions as to the origins of this nominal Edgar Perks. Gun in question is an SLE with chopper lump barrels and good wood. Edgar Perks is inscribed on the rib, but not on the action, which usually denotes a trade made gun. However, there are no marks on the locks or elsewhere on the gun that suggest origins with one of the larger trade makers. There are no patent marks on the gun either.

Perks himself was noted as a gunmaker in the 25-54 period during which this gun was originally proved and it still wears the original proof marks. I know many of you also saw the 20 bore Perks made that recently sold at Holt’s and ended up at a dealer immediately at double the price.

I can find no marks on the locks. There are initials of the barrel-maker on the barrel ("TA"), but really nothing else. This doesn’t have a T serial number on the rib like my Holloway-made Leech.
So the question is, did Perks handmake this gun? If not, who did? Not really sure why Perks would order out a gun and not put his name on it either as his name carried little weight.

That is a nice looking gun. I had to read the maker,twice, as I thought it was like mine. I have a Thomas W. Perkes.

Parabola, here you go:

Dan,

The private viewers marks were not initially part of the Rules of Proof (I believe they are now). The Birmingham marks, indicating the year code and the grade of the viewer, started in 1922, stopped in 1942 on the retirement or death of the then Proofmaster, and resumed in July 1950.

In the meantime Proof continued exactly as before.

London did not start applying date stamps until 1972, and sensibly used the last 2 digits of the year ( apart from MM for the Millennium year 2000).

Birmingham went over to the last 2 digits of the year in 2006.