I haven't posted anything here for awhile, so I thought I would show a horn I recently completed for a friend, and is my interpretation of the style that would have been found in Lehigh County Pennsylvania. The inspiration for this horn came from two original Lehigh County horns. The first one is found in Madison Grant’s book Powder Horns and Their Architecture on page 18 (top horn). The second horn was a Pre-Revolutionary War horn attributed to Lehigh County that I’ve had the opportunity to handle and examine closely. Interestingly, the architecture of the tip and base of these two horns are so similar that they could have been made in the same shop.
The horn is 12 1/4 inches total along the outside curve and 2 inches at the base. The base plug with integral finial is turned from plum wood. The octagon tip is 1 7/8 inches long and has a hand carved pine spout plug.
The base plug is stained with Aqua Fortis and secured with four square nails. The body of the horn is stained with potassium permanganate. There is a wrap of linen thread for a repair at the base of the tip. The linen is sealed with Pine Tar.
My friend is a land surveyor and will be participating in the David Thompson Columbia River Brigade this summer. David Thompson was a 19th century fur trader, explorer, surveyor, and mapmaker, and in 1811 canoed down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. The Brigade is a salute to the 200th anniversary of Thompson’s trip and the participants will be paddling voyageur canoes along his route from Invermere, British Columbia, to Astoria, Oregon.
Royce will be paddling on the final leg of the route, from Fort Vancouver in Vancouver Washington to Astoria Oregon at the mouth of the Columbia. The participants are encouraged to wear period dress and he will be no exception. Royce wanted a horn that would fit in with the period of the event and the engraving was done on the horn to commemorate this historic trip.
“Koo Koo Sint” on the outside face is the name of the canoe that he will be on.
The inside face is a map of the Columbia River from the Vancouver area to the Ocean. Showing is Fort Vancouver, the Willamette River, The Cowlitz River, Astoria and Fort Clatsop. On the top side are three symbols of the Northwest Company, a major fur trading company of the period that competed with the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Red Stag and Cross are found on the Coat of Arms of the Northwest Company and the Beaver was found on company tokens.
The strap was a raffle prize that I won at the West Coast Horn Fair in Vancouver and was woven and donated by Kris Polizzi of Elizabethtown Pennsylvania. I cut the strap to length and added the leather tabs and copper rings for attaching lacing to the horn.
More information on the David Thompson Columbia Brigade can be found on the brigade web site at:
http://www.2011brigade.org/Scott
