Many of you have seen my Parker $100 Grade Lifter on various posts before. Hopefully I wont be boring all of you with yet another picture. With no Order Book info or deep family history for my gun, I have little to personalize the gun with historically. It has been speculated that my gun may have been engraved by Jacob Glahn. So Mr. Glahn has become the most notable historic aspect of my gun. I often wonder what prompted him to engrave the gun as he did. Was it specially ordered or did Mr. Glahn just use his personal creative talents to adorn my gun as he did? I'll likely never know, but find it of interest to try to unlock some of the mystery.
The attached photo shows the rearward portion of the sidelock, I'm interested in the 3 adornments or motifs from just below the hammer to the back corner of the lock plate. Just below the hammer is a motif I think is called either
SUNRAY or SUNBURST. The originator of this motif may be credited to Louis Nimschke, can any one verify? Moving rearward we next see that "Bouncing Ribbon" type border. I've seen no other specific reference to this, nor have I seen it on any other Parker gun. Has anyone else seen this border motif? Maybe on an LC Smith from Glahn after he moved on, or perhaps by Nimschke on something other than a Parker? Lastly, in the rear corner of the plate is a
FLORAL motif. Again I have not seen this widely used on other Parkers, though I do recall seeing a similar one on at least one other Parker. Please share gun photos of similar or other unique, less common motifs of interest.
I'm wondering to what extent Mr. Glahn was influenced by Nimschke, I'm pretty sure they were fairly close in age and both German. Nimschke is widely accredited with many innovations in gun engraving and one of the most coveted of collectors. I believe he's credited with actually simplifying the Old World German Scroll and developing what's called New York Scroll or Nimschke Scroll. It was developed to be simpler and faster to engrave. In my opinion Glahn's scrollwork has a marked resemblance to that same scroll. I wonder if there was any professional relationship between these two engravers?
I have none of the reference books to refer to, only what is online and that being limited. Need to fine a copy of TPS as well as Nimschke's book and I think there's another one on 19th Century Gun Engravers. Anyway, perhaps some of you more knowledgeable than I with these books might comment on what I've written today and please do. In the meantime I'm going to check my local Public Library to see what might be there. Thanks for reading.
