Powder Horn

[msmith]

Is there a way(or ways) that you can tell if a powder horn is over a hundred and fifty years old or is contemporary?Thanks

[Rich]

I don't really know, but on an Antiques Roadshow awhile back, an "expert" pointed out that one thing to look for in the patina is if it is darker in the recesses of the horn. If it is darker in the recesses, that indicates that the patina was applied and built up in those areas and thus a newer horn. So when I recently aged my antler powder measure, I made sure there was no buildup in the carving. It looks much more authentic.

[Lee]

When someone sticks an old horn in my hand and asks if it is legitimate, I look at three things: architecture, engraving, & patination.  The achitecture, that is the design and shape of the horn, needs to be similar to other known original horns & generally follow regional characteristics for the way they are designed, carved, plugged, and painted.  Also examine any period hardware (drawpull, knob, staple, etc.)  to be sure it is consistent with the period and region of the horn.  Look for tool marks as well; they'll tell you if a modern tool was used to build the horn. The engraving needs to be similar to the styles of a given period. For instance, F&I and Rev. War horns, generally use double line, shaded (copperplate) lettering and most art work is  primative in nature, almost always avoiding the use of perspective. With patination, I look for an appropriate color (even if the horn is green) & wear patterns on the horn.  If there are no red flags that jump at me from any of these catagories, the horn is probably legit.  But there are still some great fakers who have passed off new horns as the real thing, so be careful when you buy an old horn for less than half of what it should be worth....

All this means is, when provenance is lacking from a horn, you need to spend some serious time examining legitimate old original horns, and doing some research to dermine if your horn is a fake.  The more horns you can view and handle, the better you will be at recognizing a fake.  Lee   

[Dale Halterman]

The last time I bought a horn I wasn't sure about, I showed it to Lee (above) at Dixon's, and he pronounced it original. He knows way more than I do.

Seriously, I would show it to someone you trust.

Dale H

[G-Man]

Lee is a wealth of knowledge.  I really recommmend his book on engraving patterns on 18th century horns to anyone interested in collecting, studying or making horns.

It's always a great learning experience to bring an item (antique horns, guns, anything) you have questions about  to a knowledgeable person, sit down and watch and listen to them while they study the piece.  If it's something you already own, be prepared to maybe have some things pointed out you weren't aware of, be they good or bad - but it's part of the learning.   Look at as many originals as you can and study them.  That is one of the reasons I am so grateful to the guys who bring their collections to Friendship and the CLA and share them with us - you just can't get that from a book. 

After you look at a lot of items, you sort of build up a gut feeling that goes along with studying all the features - sometimes something just won't look "right" with the whole package in spite of the piece having all of the "checklist" features in place.  Or maybe too good to be true, etc.   And anyone can be fooled - no matter how much experience you have. 

Some of the really tough ones are the ones that were reworked or pieced together from old parts (this is done with horns as well as guns)...especially if it was done 50 or 60 years ago.  Plain horns are really tough to date sometimes - there are a lot of overgeneralizations about horn styles and architecture that are based on the fancier documented period styles that don't necessarily hold up as well when it comes to plain horns. Even in the reference books, there is information about period styles on plain horns that contradicts itself from one page to the next.

One old collector/ dealer told me that if you are going to sink some serious money into an antique, go into it assuming it is a fake.  Then study it carefully and try to prove yourself wrong  on every point you find. Only buy it if you are convinced that it is legitimate.  Of course, if he was trying to sell me something, he seemed to want me to forget that lesson....

As a rule of thumb, plain antique horns can still often be had pretty inexpensively - often for less than comparable well made contemporary pieces, so they are a good way to learn.  The effort someone is willing to go to to fake something is going to go up with the price of the item....  And there are still great finds out there.  A friend of mine turned up a great 18th century engraved horn at an estate auction for about 1/4 the cost of of a good contemporary reproduction - how could he go wrong in that situation?

Lee - Karl Wilburn once told me that sometimes if you view an engraved horn under a black light recent engraving sometimes (not always) shows up differently from very old engraving, I assume again because of dirt/ patination.  Have you ever heard this?  I've never tried it.

Guy

[Lee]

Hi Guy.  I've never used a black light like you or Karl mentioned.  What I usually carry is a ten power lense to look into the cuts.  You can see the debris or lack or debris in the cuts.  A lot of grime and dirt crystals get imbedded in the cuts.  Black powder residue, even salt crystals from sweat show up in the cuts. With magnification, you can plainly see the debris in the cut - the idea being that the lack of debris indicates a more recent cut.  Of course debris in cuts can be faked too, but only the best fakers generally think of it.  If the horn is scratched rather than cut, the ragged scratch will also collect debris.  Don't forget to look for steelwool in the cut.  Steelwool is a good indicator that a horn is more recently made or worked on. If you ever get a chance, compare an old horn with a new one under magnification, and you will be amazed at the crispness of the cut of the new horn compared to the blunted or rounded edges of the cuts on the old horn.  Also, some old horns had very little use, so this is not some sort of ultimate test for an old horn.  It's just one piece of the puzzle and something else you need to account for---  You still need to remember to examine architecture, engraving, and other types of patination. Lee

[msmith]

Fellows I appreciate all the info.Thanks, M Smith

[Mad Monk]

Hi Guy.  I've never used a black light like you or Karl mentioned.

Lee,

Two thing here in this use of a light.

Experts who authenticate old documents use a light that gives a specific wave length to identify the type of ink used on the document being inspected.  Most pre-Civil War documents were written with the iron tannate ink.  This ink will fluores under that light.  Other inks will not.
If the lights were not so expensive I would have purchased one to look at original stocks to see how many had been stained with the iron stain.  These lights are similar to what you see on the crime scene investigation shows on TV.

If a horn has been faked using an organic dye to give the desired patina it will stand out when subjected to lights giving off specific wave lengths.  The modern organic dyes will also fluores. A natual patina of oxidation, skin oil, etc., will not fluores.

The lights are simply tools to detect faking.  Not the entire answer in verification, just more tools to work with.

Another thing to look at is the appearance of the fiberous structure of the horn under high magnification.  Horn is akin to our hair and fingernails and is subject to change through UV light exposure and oxidation.  The almost steady degradation of the protein that makes up the fibers (hairs) in the horn will change the appearance of the fibers with time.

[timM]

A point that was not directly touched on is when the bases for the fake is a patina'd original horn.  Plainer nice horns that truly show great age can be purchased pretty reasonably and at that point the fakers burden is the new work. (scrimshaw)  tim

[Lee]

A few quick points:
Tim: It's extremely difficult to engrave an old patinated horn without disturbing its patina.  I've tried.  If the edges of the cuts or scratches are not taken down and blunted, their sharpness will be a dead give away that the horn was engraved much later than it was made.  If you try to knock the edges off the cuts with something like steel wool it will be obvious, because it will strip away patina and leave steel wool debris in the cuts.

Second, great info on forensic lighting from Mad Monk.  One low tech way to defeat the light technology would be to use lamp black and spit for your black.  I've been doing this for years now, but not because of the light technology.  It was a natural solution to having left my ink at home and needing to finish a fellow's horn at a rendezvous.  It makes me wonder how many original horns may have been done in a similar, field expedient manner.  And you are dead right about the crazing that UV light produces in horn.  I left a horn I made in a window that got lots of light for about a year and was amazed at how the UV's and heat cooked it.  The side away from the sun looked new, but the side to the sun was seriously baked and crazed. I flipped it over and let it cook the other side for another year so it all matched up!  Lee

[FL-Flintlock]

Mad Monk,

For the lighting, you can purchase full-spectrum lamps, incandescent & fluorescent, and filter plates from places that sell industrial optic equipment.  They are used for a variety of purposes in manufacturing applications.  Normally the lamp is mounted in a metal housing then the filter plate or plates were placed on top of the housing so only certain bandwidths were allowed to pass.  The cost was not excessive, 60-100w incandescent lamps were around $10 and IIRC the filter plates were about 3.5" square and cost around $6 to $12 depending on the bandwidth. 

I spoke directly to the application engineer from the factory, he told me that most of the inspection lamps are all made to produce full-spectrum light and the filtering is done by the globe which is why the cost is so much higher.  Using the filter plate(s) accomplishes the same result for about one-quarter the cost for a single bandwidth lamp.  Most places will rape you on the housings, avoid that by using a panel-mount medium base ceramic lamp socket (they do generate a lot of heat, the housing must be all metal and vented).  If you need a defined spot of light, you can add a simple concentrator lens, about $15, over the filter plate. 

Mark

[G. Elsenbeck]

Great question and knowledgeable response Lee.