doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Rose and Scroll

JJ does the book show and list names for the various "standard" patterns?

I much prefer fine Anglaise a Bouquets.

Birdog, that's a pretty sideplate. What kind of gun is it from ? I don't see the pins we usually see in a sidelock, or is it a pinless sidelock ala Churchill? [sort of]

On the roses------well let's get to animals , first. I really think early engravers did not have good patterns, pictures, photos etc of dogs and other animals. That is probably why some appear "odd" looking since they sort of had to make them up from memory. Just my guess. The engravers seemed to develope their own style of scroll, too. Some driven by the "company" style we associate with, well, Boss, Holland, Purdey, etc. Mostly all different, but beautiful. On your gun what do you recognize as roses and what other types of flowers do you see, if any ?

THAT'S BS. I WOULD TAKE PARKER BROS. NO. 203418 OVER ANYTHING POSTED HERE.

I once, many years ago, grew quite a few roses to test their habits in the soil in my area for the largest commercial rose grower in the US. I understand the old fashioned rose that was likely the subject of some of the engravings we have seen to be what today is sometimes called a "Cabbage Rose." It opens up leaving a tightly balled up wad of petals resembling a small head of cabbage in the center of the flower. This was an early attempt at breeding what today is called a "double" petal rose, or what the experts refer to as a "Tea" rose. I don't think I have seen a "Tea" rose represented. That's the type we see today in floral bouquets we buy. In The South we have a wild native rose we call a "Cherokee Rose." It is a "single" row of petals, rather than a "double" row, and also differs from the old "Cabbage" rose. I think I can see both a "Cabbage" rose and a wild single rose we would refer to in my area as a "Cherokee" rose in some of these engravings. Here's a finely engraved Charles Boswell with both types engraved.

Barry, that portrait on the bottom is fantastic. I couldn't place the face but I knew that guy from somewhere. Now that I read the name above it, I see it's Dan. Great job of capturing his character.

Thanks Chuck, I have been making a bit of a specialty of portrait work lately. When I posted that I was hoping you would recognize him. Before I had the lettering on there I took it to the " Shoot for then troops" at moore and moore and several people looked at it and exclaimed " That's Dan ! " which made me feel like I had captured his personna.

Lots of beautiful work shown here and a most informative discussion. Of the scroll, I know Acanthus is supposed to be the basis of much of it but it certainly resembles fern fiddleheads as they open. The bulino scenes leave me amazed by the photographic qualities created with nothing more than micro cuts in steel which even convey color. What skill!

Daryl: I think we are comming at this from two different views, based on the guns we own. First, the DGJ Winter 1999 page 102 picture of the bottom of my AAH is clear as day and one does not need a glass to see the flowers imbedded within the scroll, as contrasted to your posting showing bouquets of flowers surrounded with what Steve Dodd Hughes calls "negative space," which seperates the flowers from the scroll on your gun.

We are talking semantics here so I cracked some books to justify my distinction between Rose & Scroll (flowers embedded) and Bouquet & Scroll (flowers sequestered) and all I find is ambiguity.

Going to the Winter 2006 DGJ at p.109 there is a century-old Boss with classic bouquets of flowers (whether these are roses, I don't know), but the gun is an example of "...five bouquets of roses and a very fine background scroll engraving" (As per caption). The article's author says that: "To John James Sumner must go credit for creating...the Rose & Scroll [emphasis mine] that instantly identifies a boss gun. Rose & Scroll engraving can trace its orgins to James Lucas, an underrated engraver at Purdey's. In the 1870s, Lucas introduced very fine rose & Scroll, tiny little groups of roses within very fine scroll, thus creating the quintessentially classic engraving of the British sporting gun." Whether Lucas's "little groups of roses within very fine scroll" were seperated by negative space, or were an integral part of the scroll, I have not been able to determine.

It didn't take long for the engraving pattern to immigrate to America. Again referring to the DGJ (Autumn 2005) and an article beginning at p.135 about Eugene Young, son of Gustave Young (Colt's master engraver), showing ca.1878 engraving patterns. The author at p.145 characterizes Colt's Special (expensive) engraving as "Best Bouquet...First developed by English gunmakers toward the end of the precussion period, this pattern characterized by complex scrollwork set with centralized floral motifs." (See examples on p.146, none of which look like a rose to my uneducated eye.)

My search for "classic" seminal Purdey R&S of the 1870s al la James Lucas came up empty. Fact is, what one would generally associate with R&S (or more precisely B&S in my view) all involved bouquets of flowers surrounded with negative space and then scroll. Other than my AAH Pigeon Gun I found no case on point examples of full coverage engraving having the flowers as part of the scroll. Enter Capt. A.W.du Bray, Parker's sales agent from 1884 till he died in 1928. According to Capt. du Bray, enthusing over Parker's new AAH at the 1895 Sportsmen's Exposition in Madison Square Garden:

"I claim this Parker gun...is the peer of any gun made on earth. Look at this engraving. You no longer see pictures of dogs and game, but masses of close scrolls and lines, flowers, leaves, all making a solid and continuous mass of ornament. You are looking at the last word in artistic gun engraving."

The "last word" engraving pattern was that of Henry Gough, Parker's master engraver, who signed my AAH and a few others. His son William apprenticed under him at Parker Bros and moved on to Fox, and is credited with the "Oak Laef/Acorn Stove" pattern. Yet some of William's early work at Fox follows his fathers R&S pattern. As to Capt. du Bray claiming the Parker R&S as "...the latest word in artistic gun engraving," I don't know, but I've never seen anything that pre-dates H.Gough's full-coverage pattern to contradict this bold statement. I know there is at least one coffee-table book on Purdeys (which I don't have), but I'm sure someone will be able to clarify whether James Lucas's work in the early 1870s more closely resembled Daryl's gun or my AAH, or neither?

Still, when I look at my AAH I see Rose & Scroll, being stylized flowers embedded within the close knit engraving pattern. When I look at Daryl's gun, and almost every "full coverage" engraving pattern incorporating scroll and flowers, be they exact replications of English roses for the hortocologist, or the stylized floral equalivent of "flying turnips" for the duck hunters, I think of "Bouquet and Scroll," not because I've been able to veriy the fine distinction to the period correct literature, but simply because the pattern is different from my Rose & Scroll engraved gun. So it seems that the two descriptions have been used interchangably since the inception, with no 19th century "gun cranks" seeing fit to precisely make a distinction. Investigation Continues. EDM

rose and scroll...



Not a rose to be found...