Thread: thoughts
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Old 03-21-2008, 08:18 AM
charles starks charles starks is offline
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Location: idaho
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Default Re: thoughts

I think that while the styles did change from baroque to rococo just as roger has described , I think another issue also started showing its head during the same time frame, especially concerning the Americas. Not only did line type engraving really seem to be the norm , if we look at what relief is found on especially rifles , it appears to be more castings then actual engraving .
Thus I cant help but wonder if there still was a large section of the populations that wanted this old style of work , but just did not want to pay the price . This I think would have been compounded by the large numbers of weapons flowing into this country .
An original work could be simply copied in the casting .

However those of us that do casting of parts know that the result does not carry near the appeal of the actual engraving and relief work .
I think the acceptance of casting though also played a part in the decline of actual relief engravings
Here are some examples of originals documented by Hamilton in his study called Colonial Frontier gun.
This is another fantastic study . While this book mostly documents actual pieces found in archeological digs and such and while these pieces have obviously seen their better days , we can still see the differences between the actual engraving and the castings .
I wonder how much plagiarism also played a part ?

what i assume to be the Original engraving


and knock offs obviously based of the same design but with far less skill in the work ?


here also is a comparision of work found at the end of the 18th century













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