This is a really nice rifle - looks to be as southern as can be - but hard to pin down where it might have been made. It does not look to me like something made in the Tennessee or western North Carolina mountains - more like something from a gunsmith who learned there but moved farther west or south - maybe Georgia or Alabama, even Missouri. But hard to say. One interesting thing is the patchbox - a rare example of an iron box with pierced sidepanels. Interestingly there was a signed brass mounted gun from western PA just 2 tables away at the same show with the exact same patchbox in brass. It makes one wonder if some of these boxes were manufactured and then shipped and sold down the Ohio/Mississippi Valley for sale to gusnmiths, or perhaps the maker saw the style on another rifle and used it as a pattern.
When Robert Weil started collecting images for the Contemporary Makers book in 1973 the challenge to record contemporary gun work was daunting. Gathering material was difficult and time consuming. Few makers thought that there was any value in published documentation of their work. Electronic publishing has changed all that. Having a website or having one's work available to view on the internet is becoming a necessity. In spite of all the potential to finally have a true overview of what's being produced by the artists of today, a great deal of work still remains covered up and basically unknown. Our role is to make an effort to document some portion of what’s going on today. To comment on the established makers and to uncover the unknown. We welcome your comments and suggestions and look to you our readers to make us aware of the talented makers out there. Art and Jan Riser Robert Weil and The Makers
This is a really nice rifle - looks to be as southern as can be - but hard to pin down where it might have been made. It does not look to me like something made in the Tennessee or western North Carolina mountains - more like something from a gunsmith who learned there but moved farther west or south - maybe Georgia or Alabama, even Missouri. But hard to say. One interesting thing is the patchbox - a rare example of an iron box with pierced sidepanels. Interestingly there was a signed brass mounted gun from western PA just 2 tables away at the same show with the exact same patchbox in brass. It makes one wonder if some of these boxes were manufactured and then shipped and sold down the Ohio/Mississippi Valley for sale to gusnmiths, or perhaps the maker saw the style on another rifle and used it as a pattern.
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