Here is my finished horn. The horn I made at Phil Campbell's powder horn class, and the scrimshaw was just completed at Kathy England's 3 day Southern Ohio Artisan Workshop scrimshaw class hosted by the Log Cabin Shop. This is my second attempt at making a horn and my first time scrimshawing anything. This just goes to prove that when you have a great teacher, you get great results!
Most of what I'll be discussing here in this thread are generalizations that should help a beginner navigate horning and scrimshaw, these are not rules that need to be followed.
For the horn I wanted to go with a folk art style so I made it a traditional design, maybe someone saw a fancy horn that came from a horner's shop somewhere and they wanted to try and imitate it at home. The important takeaway from the architecture here is applying the Golden Mean, so you notice the facets run roughly a third of the way up the horn and the tip is slender enough with a good enough flow down the length. Originals were also out of proportion and chunky as well, but it is considerably easier I believe for a beginner to make an attractive horn by sticking to the Golden Mean and making it slender.
The staple can't be seen, but it's just a small piece of coat hanger or so gauge wire, squared up a bit and hammer marks added with a small ball peen, sharpen bards on both sides, drill some pilots and tap the staple in to the plug. Remember that iron was precious so less is more with the staple, and you want to use the ball peen to hammer out the look of perfectly round and modern extruded wire.
I've seen people inquire about how to make folk art lettering for horns and such so here is a beginners how to. I can't emphasize enough that these are not rules!
Avoid making things too on the nose: they had questionable levels of literacy, they weren't lunatics. You don't want it to look like one of those cRaZY nEWSpaPEr CLipPingS LeTterS that the villains use in movies.
1. Scrimshaw a line that runs with the contour of the horn above and below the lettering you want to do. Notice I have a vine for a border on both ends of the body of the horn and that the lines run from border to border. Also notice the space between the top and bottom lines of text are relatively equal and run parallel.
2. The font is Times New Roman, just do a google search. Times New Roman has specific rules for which lines are slender and which lines are bold, I don't know what those rules are and likely neither did many of them so just switch it up however it looks neat to you. Sometimes they would have a letter with the correct line bold and in the same word or later on have it switched up. Sometimes they would have the letter facing the right direction and sometimes they wouldn't, sometimes they would have it the right direction and later on have it facing the wrong way. Sometimes they would have words misspelled. Add those tiny little triangles to the tops and bottoms of letters for the most part or wherever it looks neat.
3. Every letter should be a capital letter and you need to have it go the entire height of the border you create. Try to keep spacing natural. This is critical. Lower case letters and border lines that go off in whatever direction or different heights of letters is too on the the nose and needs to be avoided. I did decide to put a lower case "i" in my name but it felt right to do so I went ahead and did it.
4. The hatch marks for the shading on the bold parts of the letters mostly go in the same direction that I chose, some don't, and some are circles instead of hatches. Some don't have any bold lines. Don't go over the top and have it too on the nose, have some level of consistency and just play around until it looks neat. I added some leaves to the letters to go along with the rest of the horn's theme, you can do that or something similar, or not.
5. If you add a face or an animal anywhere it must be whimsical!
I decided to do a Fraktur style. Fraktur came from Pennsylvania-Dutch and German immigrants. Thematically it uses a lot of tulips and birds tied together with vines and branch work. Compositionally I took a lot of inspiration from Cory Joe Stewart, nothing specific that he's done, but in the spirit of how he ties things together if that makes any sense? The sunbursts around the base plug pins I took directly from one of his horns, I don't believe he's the first one to do that, but it's the first time I think I noticed it done. The artwork was largely taken from Rebecca E Mooneyhan's watercolors of which I am a big fan, the scrimshaw work of Kathy England, and from the book of original works: Fraktur: Folk Art and Family (A Schiffer Book for Collectors)
Corinne & Russell Earnest.
Suns and other traditional and natural elements are also incorporated. A common pattern throughout Fraktur work is groups of threes, three berries, three flowers, three birds, three leaves, etc. An obvious homage to the Holy Trinity. For some reason there's this poisonous contemporary notion that people leaving their birth Nation to escape the persecution of there religious beliefs all of a sudden became agnostic as soon as they landed in the new world. The important part here is anywhere you can incorporate triples into your design helps create the spirit of the style. Also, all animals must have large eyes.
I saw this polychrome horn done by Rick Froehlich many years ago and it has always stuck with me. It was one of those Pennsylvania-Dutch trees with a bird on each branch, and each bird was sporting a different color of plumage. It was the first time I saw a horn and thought to myself these things are pretty cool, I've also been obsessed with the image of a tree with a bird on each branch ever since and here is my first version of it. I made the birds different sizes and had them looking in different directions with the beaks open or closed to give life to the scene.
And here is my favorite part of the horn, the rabbit sprinting away from the fox (or hound?) seen on the other side of the horn a couple pictures ago. I can't emphasize enough that all animals must have cartoonishly large eyes. I saw these long necked birds in the Fraktur book flanking a certificate of some sort and like the look of them so I drew them flanking my name. I showed the horn to Simeon England, one evening after he was done teaching his class, and he pointed out a blank spot and suggested I put a doodle on it. People liked to doodle back then on things and it would give the object more life. I penciled on a sort of hunter's star mixed with a fortress on a map type of shape and scratched it in and inked it without giving it any more thought to prevent myself from overthinking a doodle and risk it no longer being a doodle. I'm happy with it. Simeon also gave me a small gift he made, what he may not realize is I always reciprocate a gift and have one in the works for him. I would appreciate it if nobody reading this tells him, I would like to keep it a surprise unless he happens to read this far into a thread.
I also added my maker's mark and year since that's the ethical thing to do when you create an item.
A few things to wrap up. With all the scratching and cutting involved it's easy to lose track of everything you've done so eventually you will have to ink it prior to the final inking just to see where your're at. When you do ink it, don't go crazy obsessive fixing everything you originally missed, just get most of it and leave some things unfinished how they are in the final horn.
Drawing is a learned skill, get some paper and draw and draw and draw a bird or a flower or whatever thing you want to add until you can draw it confidently. It's a lot easier to just go through several sheets of paper drawing something over and over again to get it right than it is erasing something on your horn a million times.
The finish was October Country Traditional Horn Stain. It's a deep purple color that goes on purple but as you rub it in it turned the white horn body light golden yellow color, it dries almost immediately and repeated coats give the golden yellow a browner and browner color. The tip was dark black and it it turned the tip a chocolate color. I think I rubbed in 3 or 4 coats, I didn't want to overdo it. Wear gloves, it's kind of acidic and will burn your hands while staining the heck out of them. I then finished by rubbing in a coat of wax.
Rebecca E Mooneyhan:
Questions and comments are appreciated!
