Art DeCamp Horn

[Ken G]

I was looking at Art's horn on Contemporary Blogspot this morning.  Very nice looking and I have contemporary horns with the spotted pattern before.  What area are the spotted horns from?  I assume it is based on some actual piece?
Ken

[don getz]

I am not a horn expert, but, I think those spotted horns were made in the Berks-Lehigh county areas of Pa.   Kind of a
"dutchy" thing that they did......Don

[chuck c.]

I've always liked the looks of these horns and I'm very curious as to what you would use to make the spots.

[Ken G]

They are very cool looking.  I'd like to know how the circles are made too.
Ken

[rich pierce]

I confess!  I am envious of everthing they post on that site.

[Robert Wolfe]

I'm with Rich. I am awed by everthing on that site. If I'm not careful I compare it to the stuff that I do and get depressed.............

[Randy Hedden]

I thought that the horn looks like a Lancaster horn, but I am no horn expert. I believe that most Pennsylvania screw tip horns were left undecorated, so we should be looking at the architecture and details of the horn for identification. Regardless of the decoration I think I am looking at a typical Lancaster butt plug and screw tip. The spots on Mr. DeCamp's horn could have been made by any of the methods that were recently talked about here in a thread about antiqueing and coloring horns. Obviously the spots or circles were made with some kind of dye probably painted on with a small paint brush. This method of decoration would be the same as that used to make polychrome scrimshawed horns.

Perhaps Mr. DeCamp will chime in and answer some questions?

Randy Hedden

www.harddogrifles.com

 

[hornturner]

The horn pictured on the Contmeporarymakers blog site is a replica Berks County, PA screw tip horn.  There are some excellent examples of original horns of this type in Madison Grant's book "Powder Horns and Their Architecture".  See pages 68 (bottom), and 69 (top) for a couple of really nice examples of "spotted" Berks horns.

This lead oxide spotting and decoration seems to be found most often on eastern Pennsylvania horns ranging from Philadelphia up the Lehigh Valley to Allentown, and a little further east into most all of Berks County.  This style of decoration was popular in the last quarter of the 18th century and most horns found with this method of decoration will be from the 1770 to 1810 period.

The dark reddish brown spots are applied by using a paste made from lead oxide, quick lime and then driven with a strong lye solution.  Robert Weil wrote a nice description of the process that I use for these spots in one of the old CLA newsletters. 

Art DeCamp

[Randy Hedden]

Thanks Art,

Good thing I said I wasn't a horn expert.

Randy Hedden