How do you tell who engraved your Parker ?

[B. Dudley]

Parker worked on a contractor basis for all their craftsmen for the majority of the manufacturing of the Parker gun.

Basically there was a chief engraver and he was responsible for setting the tone of work style, guidence and hiring of engravers under him in that department.

Generally speaking, Parker engravers did not sign their work. However, there are some examples of signed work on earlier high grade guns. It is more a case of where the engraving style of the guns followed a certain standard under each head contractor. It was the head engravers designs and style that was being executed, but done by other (sometimes multiple) underling craftsmen.
It is only in cases where the execution is top quality or above average (usually seen in the animals) that you can speculate that the head engraver may have cut that gun. Or in a lot of cases, the scroll may have been cut by underlings and the animals and scenes were mostly cut by the head contractor.