Let me explain why I didn’t buy Marcus book on Fine English Scroll yet

[Arnaud Van Tilburgh]

Let me explain why I didn’t buy Marcus book on Fine English Scroll yet.

In my opinion Marcus is the FES expert on this forum.
I almost did read all the treads and reply in the Café from the start, and there isn’t that much about FES.
Now and then when one showed his / her work titled “English Scroll”, Marcus offered his good support telling it wasn’t real Fine English Scroll.

I even found a photo of Martens attempt on FES having Marcus coming in to give advice and making corrections.

So to me, no wonder I was thinking FES is something like other English traditions done the same way for centuries, that you probably only could master when being a Englishman.
I thought it had that many rules, no one else than Marcus would be able to Master it.
I even remember a story Marcus told about how long it took him sitting next to his dad (Ken Hunt), before his dad told him it looked good.

So my plan was to wait buying Marcus book, until some of you showed your practicing based on the book and find out that it was possible to have Marcus blessing.

I also saw a tread started by Bram Ramon showing Fine Belgium Scroll, so I thought, “the hell with Fine English Scroll" l, I just try something that looks nice in that style, what is in a name.

Some of you did like my first attempt, so probably the rules I gathered till now aren’t that wrong. However it seems I don’t even understand what are inward scrolls

Still as most of you did read Marcus book and know more rules it is kind of stupid trying to cut a design like FES without that book. That is why I didn’t want to trigger Marcus by giving it another name.

arnaud

 

[phil]

Arnaud. The book is on my christmas list to santa. Your attempt looked good to me, but I am no expert either. When I get Marcus's book and have studied it I will look back at your post and see if I can spot any problems from what I have learned. Just remember how many people would be absolutely delighted to be as skilled as you are at the moment. I know I would.

 

[Roger Bleile]

Arnaud et al,

Fine English scroll, fine scroll, rose and scroll, etc. is known by many names in Europe and North America. It seems like the gun engravers of each gun making country have their own name for it and their own way of executing it. It can be argued that it originated with English gun engravers because the engravers of all the other European countries incorporate their word for English in their name for it.. In any case, I will concede that the FES as taught by Marcus and handed down from Harry Kell to Ken Hunt is the "authentic" English scroll, if that matters to anyone outside of the UK.

In Belgium and France fine rose and scroll is known as Anglaise a bouquet. Germans call it "druck Englisch", the Austrian engravers of Ferlach (I'm not sure about Steyr) call it "Rosenbukett mit altenglischen Arabesken." The engravers of Gardone, V.T., Italy call it "Inglesina e bouquet di fiori." I don't know what EFS is called in Dutch, maybe Bram or Pierre can tell us.

If you want to see examples of how the engravers of different countries cut FES you can check my glossary. My suggestion for Arnaud is to call it by the French name then there is no attempt to say you are cutting the "authentic" English scroll.

RB

 

[Arnaud Van Tilburgh]

Thanks for your support Roger. Like I said " what is in the name"
Your suggestion given it a French name, you probably think my native language is French, but it isn't.
And in a way it isn't Dutch neither but Flemish. Of course Dutch and Flemish are quite similar and for years authorities try to make one standard Dutch for both.
In fact Dutch and Flemish are like American English and British English.

arnaud

 

[Willem Parel]

Maar ik kan u goed verstaan Arnaud...

 

[Haraga.com]

I always get Dutch and Flemish mixed up. Sometimes I just want to give up on trying.

 

[Brian Marshall]

So which claims to be "proper"?

It's the Brits in our case... not based on numbers - but on who used it the longest.


Brian

 

[Terrezar]

I think that saying that one is proper and one is not is an impossible task. In Norway we call this style "Akantus", a name given because it is inspired by the flower Acanthus. However, within Norway alone we have more than a dusin styles. We have those used for a kind of painting called "Rosemaling" (Rosepainting), we have styles used for woodcarving, and others for carving in leather, and finaly we have styles used for engraving. And, just to make it a little more complicated, we have regional varieties of all of these styles.

I guess the scrolls comes naturaly to people, and we can all agree that they are indeed amasing to look at. Personaly I notice that when I let my mind wander and the pen starts to move on its own I tend to draw some kind of scrolls.

However, Arnaud, I am glad you don't just clame it to be Fine English Scroll, and leave it at that, because this is a piece of cultural heritage from England, and if it is to be changed into a more modern form then i think we shuld let the English do that themselves.

 

[Arnaud Van Tilburgh]

To all, thanks to my son in law Jeroen and Bram, I now have all the info I need to study the Belgium version of FES.

thank you both

to be continued, arnaud

 

[Marcus Hunt]

Arnaud et al,

Fine English scroll, fine scroll, rose and scroll, etc. is known by many names in Europe and North America. It seems like the gun engravers of each gun making country have their own name for it and their own way of executing it. It can be argued that it originated with English gun engravers because the engravers of all the other European countries incorporate their word for English in their name for it.. In any case, I will concede that the FES as taught by Marcus and handed down from Harry Kell to Ken Hunt is the "authentic" English scroll, if that matters to anyone outside of the UK.

First, let me say Roger that the reason I produced my book and DVD was twofold. First, there no longer seems to be many engravers in the UK capable of producing EFS to the quality of yesteryear. Like most things it takes time to learn and really needs a master to teach an apprentice. Many of the master engravers no longer work in a factory setting and aren't taking on apprentices to carry on the tradition. This means that within the factory engraving environment the blind are leading the blind. It's not the engraver's fault as such; if they haven't been taught the subtleties and nuances of the style themselves how ore they supposed to hand it on to the next generation of engravers? I saw some pictures of a factory engraved Purdey the other day and was absolutely shocked by what they allowed to be cut onto a £70k gun!

So, primarily this set is to educate the engraver on how to go about designing and cutting (you need to be able to understand how to create and bring together the various elements) good, commercial quality, English small scroll. Once the basics are learned the engraver's individual personality will start to shine through and subtle differences between different engravers cutting the same design will show up.

Secondly, the set is designed to show the engraver my way of cutting EFS as was taught to me by my father and to him by Harry Kell and to him by his father. It is not the only way. Different countries have different ways of producing EFS but once again, the history of this has often been by trying to replicate the original English scroll and over the years this has often been completely debased. Once again because they never had an English master engraver to teach them so they've had to figure it out for themselves. That is not to say all foreign EFS is bad, it's certainly not! Some of the Italian engravers produce lovely EFS (others don't!!!), and Martin Stroltz and Winston Churchill both produce beautiful renditions of the style.

I just didn't want the subtle intricacies of the "English method" to be lost and to be honest, I am amazed at how much this style has been taken to our hand engraving community's heart. Although it's early days, some of the stuff I've seen published on the forum shows great promise and if only a handful of engravers finally master and produce good quality EFS I hope they will be able to pass on the knowledge and know-how to a future generation of engravers.

Now I'm off back to bed to nurse this flu bug.

 

[Roger Bleile]

Marcus,

First of all, I sincerely hope that you recover soon from your illness. I have had the flu three times in years past and it is a debilitating illness. I haven't had it for over 20 years because I get inoculated every year.

Your comment above that "...there no longer seems to be many engravers in the UK capable of producing EFS to the quality of yesteryear" prompts me to ask if you have had many orders for your course from the UK. From comments on this forum, I gather that the course has been very popular with Americans and others outside the UK.

Cheers,
Roger

 

[highveldt]

Marcus;

My sympathy to you as the flu is really, really bad, bad "stuff".

As soon as your book/video was open to sale I bought it and was one of the first to receive it here in USA.

I have a 1889 vintage Stephen Grant & Sons side lock ejector(SLE) shotgun that was in terrible condition about 10 years ago when I bought it, needing the locks rebuilt, the ejectors rebuilt as well as the lock cocking arms re-made. All of this is standard gunmaking work for me and I did all of this and then sent the gun to my friend Malcolm Cruxton in Birmingham afterwards to be re-proofed as I lengthened the chambers to 2 3/4 inch from the its original 2 1/2" chambers.

All of this was as I said a number of years back. However, the gun needed a complete re-engraving as the almost all of the original case hardened finish had worn away on the action, leaving the action exterior soft and consequently, the engraving was greatly worn away --some of its engraving is only a blur or what it was and I have to guess at it. The engraving was and is 1889 fine English scroll, or at least the engravers view of what FES should have looked like, and executed without means of magnification we have today.

So, the last thing I needed to do was to re-engrave the action, trigger plate, triggerguard, fore-end iron, and fore-end pieces. However, one problem: I did not know how to engrave. So after I retired in 2009 I started to learn to engrave on my own (without a master as you have pointed out is so much needed).

Therefore your book/video was just what I was waiting and I was very excited when you first made mention of its coming.

I have finished engraving everything except the action, which I have started on. And when I finish it I will send it up to Doug Turnbull's to be re-hardended. I am generally opposed to re-color case hardening shotgun actions due to my concerns of over stressing the metal, but this action is one of those early English SLE actions that can only barely be referred to as steel and one of my English gunmaker friends here in America(Jack Rowe, late of Birmingham) says that they are really high grade iron from that time frame. It is so soft you can engrave it with a pocket knife.

Since I am an amateur craftsman engraver ( not an artist like you, your father and sister), the engraving is not going to be a great job, but it will look better than it did in such condition as it was.

To get to the "bottom line" I believe there were at least 3 engravers working on this 1889 Stephen Grant & Sons SLE, and the locks (Chilton) have their FES engraving more like your style, than the action body. Compared to engraving of today, by you and other English engraving masters it was done in a haphazard method with some cuts going the wrong way, way to much shading line(just to cover area and to hurry up finishing the work), double cuts formed incorrectly and so forth.

Why would I spend so much time on this Grant SLE? The answer is that inside the action body, just between the two firing pin holes is stamped the initials "J.R", and the gun and action is styled as the later classic Boss guns were and are--not as Stephen Grant guns were styled with fluted fences. The initials are for the great gunmaker John Robertson, who just a couple of years later bought Boss & Co. and developed Boss into the top gun is was and is. Donald Dallas(author of book: "Boss & Co.") view is that this Stephen Grant SLE, is the first known prototype of the soon to be Boss classic style gun, and that this gun was built by John Robertson and John Robertson was allowed by Stephen Grant to do so for this gun #6030 and its sister of the pair #6029. This pair of SLE's was completed and sold 9 August 1889, just 3 days before the "Glorious 12th" opening day of driven grouse season. So to my mind, this special gun deserved to be restored (and it really needed a better engraver than me--a 72 year old English gun enthusiast that cannot see all that well and has to use a microscope to engrave). But I am what what I am and otherwise the gun may have eventually gone to the rubbish bin, without my intervention.

Regards;
Steve