Seeking the Damascus Rosetta Stone

After being consigned to the proverbial scrap heap of history for the better part of the 20th Century, Damascus is back in a big way. In England W.W. Greener is again making new “best” guns using vintage Damascus tubes to great acclaim. As Steven Dodd Hughes recently noted in his review of a Belgian documentary film on Damascus-barrel production (“Making Damascus Barrels,” Nov/Dec ’08): “all things Damascus have become fascinating to collectors . . . .”
    The intrinsic beauty of Damascus barrels as well as the mystery surrounding the lost art of their manufacture has fueled this fascination. But the global reach of the Internet is unquestionably helping make the lost art a little less mysterious—and also helping collectors worldwide clarify and expand their knowledge of production techniques and the many variations in patterns and types of pattern-welded barrels.
    As Hughes noted, Peter Mikalajunas has launched www.damascus-barrels.com, “devoted to understanding the technology, people and art that created forge welded Damascus shotgun barrels.” Complementing this is DamascusKnowledge (www.damascusknowledge.com-a.googlepages.com/home), a non-commercial site created by Rev. Drew Hause, M.D., an American Damascus enthusiast and “reformed gun collector.” Hause writes that his site “was established as a library for the acquisition, collection, and transmission of knowledge, new and old, regarding pattern-welded shotgun barrels.” The Website and Hause’s PictureTrail albums host hundreds of photographs of Damascus barrels and illustrations as well as links to dozens of digitized books, articles and online manuscripts on related topics. Although both sites cover similar ground, Hause is focused on discovering and translating what he calls “Damascus Rosetta Stones”—that is, manufacturing or salesmen’s sets of samples that are labeled with the original names of each pattern. During the peak in popularity of pattern-welded barrels there were probably 100 variations of twist, Damascus and laminated-steel barrels made in England, Belgium, Austria, France, Spain, Serbia, Hungary, Russia and Italy—although today all are generically referred to as “Damascus.”
    Identifying the long-forgotten names of specific Damascus patterns has been a matter of educated guesswork for modern collectors, excepting where gunmakers’ records provide clues. Confusion has been amplified because individual makers often adopted “house” names for patterns—some of the names already being used by others to describe entirely different patterns. Descriptions also differed from country to country and sometimes changed over time. “English Best” Damascus from 1880, for example, could be in as many as 10 different patterns.
    Thanks to the efforts of enthusiasts—so far more than 100 have contributed photos or resources—Hause has been able to locate and publish photos of two “Rosetta” sample sets: one from Belgium, the other from Ferlach. Leads offer hope for a similar set from Birmingham. And Hause continues to seek photos of Damascus barrels, particularly those with identified patterns. “Just one photo can be the answer to a large part of the puzzle,” Hause said.
    Hause, an ordained Baptist minister and missionary physician, currently owns no Damascus guns. After leading a medical mission trip to Central America a decade ago, he eventually pared down his collection to a single Parker and two L.C. Smiths, the “youngest” of which is 100. His enthusiasm to expand and share knowledge about Damascus barrels, however, remains undiminished. “I’ve devoted hundreds and hundreds of hours to this,” Hause said, “but I am only building on the foundational work of the late Dr. Oscar Gaddy and could have done nothing without the generosity of the many contributors.”   —Vic Venters