Yes...the revival periods are what I was refering to as well...here in the last months of the first decade of the 21st century, the early 1900s is a long time ago already...the 1870s even longer...what seems to give horns like this away is the horn, not the carving...not to say that engraving on that level is easy by any means...but many engravers are capable of such work, though they may not know beans about horn smithing...and that usually shows....
I think a modern engraver ( meaning post 18th century for sure..and 20th century seems most likely) was provided with an old original crapo horn...he did his thing...including filing in some grailing etc...and thought it was a good enough canvas for his skills...who would know, or for that matter even care, Im sure at the time it was well recieved as an example of what it was, fantastic new carving on a seemingly suitable old horn, and the artistr was praised for his skill by whom ever he made it for, gave it to, or even sold it too(Im giving the benifit of the doubt here that it was initially not made to decieve anyone), ...as to the apparent lack of decent horn smithing on the particular horn in question, its only recently that we have access to such wealths of knowledge as forums like this, or recently published full color books etc...about carved horns so that we can base our work today on truer examples...let alone rediscover, research, or be taught the techniques used to create professional caliber powder horns. So even though the carver definately had some kind of example to study and go by, most likely a black and white image from an antiques magazine etc...making an actual suitably proper horn was problematical, but finding an old one, especially a crude one, not so much so...and he was interested or dedicated to history enough that he even used a good old name and proper dates etc...
Also, I was of the understanding that such levels of carving skill as seen on this horn, but genuinely done in the 1750/1760s, represented the work of professional gravers and horn smiths...and such pieces were commemeorative type horns produced to be sold (or connisioned by) those that served in the war and were well off enough to afford such work..I never thought such graving was "battlefield " or spare time sitting around the fort type work...but rather high end shop work...and a high end shop would not try to sell a crude powder horn like that in my opinion, no matter how well it was going to be carved...but would rather carve on a professionally made horn equal to the carving...
of course...if it was a special horn near and dear to some F+I veterans heart...like one his relative made for him, and one he carried at his side as he fought...perhaps he could have had it commemoratively carved after the fact specially....hiring a professional graver to do it...but it seems such extremely personal home spun type horns when decorated, were decorated specifically with "battle field" renditions, and tend to exhibitit more folky and primative carving techniques acordingly ....
Again, please indulge me the above thoughts as this this is all just my just my opinion...and I would also say the horn is worth what its carving is worth...as an example of supurb horn carving.worth perhaps many hundreds,but as an historic war relic commanding the high price of known F+I horns carved to a similar level...no way...TCA
