Me too, and as I alluded in my brief editorial at the end of the article, Tom outbid me on that GH on the GB auction. I apparently didn’t love it enough... or quickly enough.





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Stylized for sure but every one I’ve seen has that dark area on its neck and on its back. And none of them have tails. If they were just personal interpretations of birds they would not all be so similar. They were meant to represent some specific species IMHO.

https://www.gunsinternational.com/gu...n_id=101131006

Check out the floor plate -- almost identical birds down to the three lines on the wings

“looking back birds”
 

Found some interesting stuff in TPS. The text is from p. 224 Vol 1. The other two pictures can be found on p. 270.

Could that gun be what would be called a Friday afternoon gun ? The engraver did a little extra work on the gun rather start another another late Friday .

The standard border engraving for a GH of that period is illustrated here... which, I'm sure takes a bit more time than a simple 'graver walk' border. But then, the subject gun appears o have both, one over the other, so who knows what happened there...?


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Herstal FN, used a graduated engraving system. Apprentices cut borders and light scroll, journeymen more complicated scrolls and scenes and Master engravers the really expensive guns. But it was not out of the ordinary to find all three grades of engravers had worked on one gun with the Master sometimes taking the credit. I wonder if someone of Goughs talent sometime just cut the roundel scenes while others did the repetitious work

My mother had a speckled hen
It laid behind the door
And every day it laid three eggs
On Sunday it laid four

Guinea Fowl
https://www.tripadvisor.co.za/Locati...onal_Park.html

I always thought those birds looked more like guineas than anything else.

I bought a beautiful set of 26" 20-gauge Damascus barrels to fit to one of my 0-frame GH guns with nice 26" 16 ga. Damascus. They are so close that I know it will not take much to fit them very nicely. The big problem will be the doll's head. As you can see someone attempted to fit this set to another gun prior to my buying them. difficult but not impossible.


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