My Very First Bulino

Phil Coggan

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Here's a couple of plates i've dug out. They were engraved in 1982. The smallest was my very first attempt at dots.
You have to bare in mind that I had only been "Messing" about for a very short period, and had not yet been able to make a graver that would cut properly, at this point I still had'nt.
There were as far as I knew, no books about on how to engrave, so it was a matter of, make a tool, grind it, temper it and see if it worked. If it did'nt, try again.
I was not familier with scroll design in fact the St.George scroll engraving was a VERY bad attempt at an Italian scroll that I had found a picture of.

I was desperate to become an engraver and at this time I had engraved on mainly practice plates.

I sent these plates to a few gun companies but had no luck with getting work, and I don't blame them, ok, the scenes were ok, but the scroll leaves much to be desired.

One very well known gun company sent them back saying that they thought this work was "Photo etched" and seamed to imply that I was pulling a fast one!

This really got to me, after all that work I put into them, for someone to think that.
I wrote back explaining the technique from start to finish. It appeared that they had never seen "Dot Work". They apologised and invited me to visit them, we got on well and later there was a lot of work from them.

Anyway, here they are!

Phil


 
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Peter E

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Looks great Phil. I really like the knight and dragon scene. I really appreciate all you post on the forum.

Thanks,
Peter
 

vanknife

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Feb 16, 2007
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420
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Pretoria South Africa
Hi Phil,
And that is exactly what I meant in one of my previous comments on your engraving, You were Born to be an engraver and you are bloody good at it.

Thanks for inspiring youngsters like me.

Cheers
“VAN”
 

Mario Sarto

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Jul 30, 2008
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Bad Salzuflen
Wow, impressive. I can feel the heat ... The pictures are good just as well as the information you gave with them. Thank you for share this with us!
Mario
 

Mack

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Nov 13, 2008
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Florida
You were truly born to be an engraver. No doubt about it. Is that King George slaying the dragon.?
 

Sam

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Wonderful engravings with a beautiful control of light and shadow.
 

santos

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Nov 12, 2006
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Location
France
Hi Phil ,

It's very nice to have your fingers giving us the scale of your first dot engraved plate .

There's an incredible amount of details in such a little plate.

Thanks again for sharing :)

Jean
 

Tim Herman

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Mar 1, 2008
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Location
Olathe Kansas
Phil amazing as usual. You were born for this without a doubt. I have been reading everything I can find on bulino and very often the term/technique of chiarascuro comes up but have yet to understand what that is all about. Something about light and contrast and all kinds of things pertaining to light. Do you have any info on this or know where I can really find out what it means? I comes up in the Fracassi book often to. Thank you for any help. Tim
 

Andrew Biggs

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Nov 10, 2006
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Christchurch, New Zealand
Hi Phil

Still looks pretty darn impressive after 26-27 years. It just goes to show what can happen with a bit of self belief and if you're prepared to back yourself and take a chance.

Cheers
Andrew
 

Arnaud Van Tilburgh

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Oct 3, 2008
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Belgium
Phil, as usual incredible nice work.
I understand your frustrations that it looks like "Photo Etching"
My engraving skills are far beyond yours, but even I have a problem when I show my engravings to some of my friends and customers, they can’t see what hand engraving is all about, nether does one understand that engraving is about cutting thin lines out of the metal.

And I can imagine that if you work was shown elsewhere than in this Café, even I could not recognise it as an engraving.

I finally have Ron Smith Study Kit with Books, and after reading about your experience with people who can't see the difference between "Photo Etching" and engravings, I think less lines for my shadings is perhaps easier to sell and recognising as an engraving

arnaud
 

monk

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what a bleepin mistake those people made turning down your work ! at least 1 company had the common sense to talk with you. certainly a good thing.
 
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