American Gold

For a variety of reasons, contemporary American engravers are not usually known for working on “best” shotguns. Some of these stem from the fact that America’s most skilled engravers typically are employed embellishing custom rifles, revolvers and knives. Another explanation is that most best shotguns come from overseas, and it’s natural that the people engraving them are artists working “over there.” The question then is: Are contemporary American engravers capable of executing work appropriate for a best shotgun? The answer is a definite yes, and as proof I offer one of the country’s best practitioners: Eric Gold.
    Gold, age 57, is at the peak of his form, his work characterized by clean, stylized, acanthus-leaf scroll—inspired by late 19th Century J.P. Sauer patterns—coupled with game scenes of unsurpassed quality. He can provide stunning bas-relief animals or lines. His scroll can be British-influenced, with carefully executed central elements framed by corner embellishments, or a sinuous flow of tendril & leaf washing exuberantly over the entire surface. And appropriate for a man with Gold’s surname, the yellow metal often features tastefully in his work.
    In the past Gold’s tableau has included knives, pistols, single-shot and bolt-action rifles, shotguns and a limited-edition series of molded panels featuring the big cats. Shotguns and rifles are his mainstay now, and it’s hard not to notice that the predator/prey relationship is a favorite subject. His portrayal of “fang and claw” is powerful without being sensationalistic, and it shows his intimate understanding of carnivores and their role in nature. A good illustration is the Gold-engraved panel of a Bengal tiger resting comfortably under jungle foliage. It is fascinating for the terrible possibilities camouflaged in the shadings and textures of the surrounding vegetation. Gold’s animals succeed anatomically and then as compositional elements incorporated into the larger whole. For the knowledgeable bird hunter, it’s obvious: The quail look like quail; the doves look like doves; and the dogs not only look like dogs but also, when appropriate, they look like the dogs in the photos provided by the works’ commissioners. And beyond the subject or style, Gold’s work has an originality and clarity of voice that goes well beyond craft and speaks to each viewer.
    To keep up with the demand for his work, Gold is busy at the bench six days a week. His output is from one to three guns a year. Even at that, his bookings extend three to five years out. To relax after a long day of directing tiny errorless incisions on steel, he might spend the evening designing and building a fully articulated and animated plesiosaur robot or a model steam-engine-powered Ferris wheel. He might also unwind while designing a zoot-suited pig to emblazon the clutch cover on a Harley. With taste this eclectic, it’s not surprising to learn that art for art’s sake is a tradition in the Gold family; his brother, Brian, studied formally at the Art Institute of Boston and now teaches art in England. Like many of the best engravers, Gold loves to draw, and he experiments with commissions on paper, exploring the possibilities in collaboration with the client. Many of his designs recall the naturalistic genre so popular at the turn of the century, and in that theme he credits noted Parisian designer René Lalique as a favorite.
    At first glance it’s tempting to call Gold’s game-scene work “bulino.” But Gold more often uses the depth and width of incised lines over the traditional Italian technique of tiny “picked” dots to achieve light and shadow. “It produces a durable yet subtle image,” Gold said. “Some of my clients are older and specifically request a bolder line so they can see the work easily.” To illustrate the relative aspect of scale in engraving, Gold playfully incised a full-bodied pachyderm on half of a 5/32"-diameter screw head. With detail visible only under 5X magnification, it begs the question: How many elephants can dance on the head of a pin?
    Gold is somewhere on middle ground technologically. He is not a slave to it, but he certainly is aware of its advantages. His introduction to the trade couldn’t have been more demonstrative of the shift in technology. By a twist of fate, when Gold was 19 he moved into the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado, next door to John Rohner, co-founder of the company that built the world’s first commercial power engraver. Tired of manually hammering a cutting edge across steel, Rohner had been certain there had to be a better way and had convinced his brother-in-law, Don Glaser, to come up with it. Glaser was an engineer with a background in pneumatics, and he designed a machine called the Gravermeister. His invention used compressed air to cycle a small hammer-like piston back and forth in a cylindrical hand piece. A conventional engraving tool was fastened to the hand piece and driven across the work like a miniature jackhammer. With a dial, the stroke rate could be varied from 400 to 4,000 per minute, and a foot pedal controlled the power of the cut.
    Together, Glaser and Rohner founded GRS, a company that still makes the power engraving tools used by many of the world’s best practitioners. In fact, Gold is so imprinted on his GraverMeister that he reports: “I can’t begin to work unless I hear the sound of the machine in the background.” He also is wed to the original form, eschewing today’s quieter machines and new, lighter hand pieces.
    Gold quickly took a liking to the Rohner family and began spending quite a bit of time in their home. John Rohner was equally taken with Gold, and when the young man expressed interest in expressing himself creatively, Rohner took him under his wing and introduced him to engraving. Gold was glad to try it, but he was never really smitten. It was only after a few years trying to earn a living “busting knuckles on cars for little cash” that he gave the discipline his full attention. “When John told me I could make $10 an hour engraving and I realized I could also satisfy the compulsion I had to express myself artistically, I never looked back.”
    In 1971 Gold moved to Arizona and started engraving full time on his own. With no master to work with, Gold taught himself the art while living a rustic existence in the scenic ponderosa rim country. He “scraped by” for several years doing basic work for little compensation, until he met English-trained master engraver John Barraclough at a gun show and the older man generously helped Gold with a few problems.
    “John Barraclough chuckles when I call him ‘Master,’” Gold said. “I knew how to inlay gold poorly when I met him. He took the time to talk to me at length and then sent me a demo plate with all the steps cut and inlaid into it and even included the all-important undercutting punch. That allowed me to do whatever I wanted with gold. He even made a fixture for me to hold really difficult gun parts in the vise. This was another major breakthrough for me. I could go on and on about his help. It’s large in my career.”
    Like scores of other American engravers, Gold cites Australian-born engraver Lynton McKenzie (who trained with Ken Hunt in England and ended his career working in Tucson) as a source of inspiration. In addition: “Winston Churchill’s work is a huge influence. Looking at his mastery is humbling and at the same time tremendously motivating.”
    As a private yet inclusive person, Gold now is at a point in his career where skill allows him to work on commissions of choice—mostly shotguns and bolt-action rifles, with the occasional knife thrown in to break the routine. With his considerable talent, he is fully capable of going beyond the often-sparse American minimalist style to cover a gun surface completely with traditional scroll—tastefully spiced with gold if desired. One of his early shotguns was a custom Fox by Steven Dodd Hughes that sported plenty of scroll and featured a covey of quail flushing on the floorplate. Another early commission was a Holland & Holland double rifle with African animals in relief. These are examples of traditional decoration, but Gold is capable of going beyond traditionalism with his own distinctive style. Generally, it’s the signature Gold acanthus that speaks the artist’s name louder than any autograph. And the addition of his game scenes elevates and separates a work further. The bottom line is that Gold can do it all and has the temperament to work with each client to achieve a result that pleases both parties.
In that vein Gold recently completed a Kolar competition gun for a clays shooter from Texas. The predator/prey motif was one befitting a shotgun: peregrine falcon/mourning dove. And again the anatomy of the difficult-to-represent subjects was well incorporated into the gun’s overall design. “The steel on the Kolar action was so hard I had to constantly re-sharpen my tools,” Gold said. “It took quite a bit more time just because of that, not to mention inlaying the gold. It was difficult, but I think the owner is pleased with the result.”
    Gold currently is working on a trio of bolt guns with master craftsman and arguably the dean of American custom rifle makers, Jerry Fisher. The trifecta, commissioned for an American collector, is almost finished and will be a tour de force not only for Gold and Fisher but also for custom rifles in general. The rifles display the clean, classic lines of Fisher and the flowing acanthus scroll of Gold on matte-black backgrounds—in one sense anchoring them in conservative traditionalism and in another making a bigger statement about weaponry and art.
    Fisher had this to say about Gold’s work: “I have not seen an engraving of his that was not first class . . . . I would never try to compare engravers as to who might be the best, as this is never fair. A lot depends on the work piece, subject matter and what the client demands. Eric, given his head and not encumbered by financial constraints, can stand with any engraver alive in the world today.”
    With the availability of talented gunsmiths and gunmakers in the world, discerning buyers can commission custom shotguns of very high quality. By the same token, with the availability of fine engravers “over here,” why shouldn’t people maximize their enjoyment and dollars by buying “American Gold”?

Author’s Note: For more information on custom engraving, contact Eric Gold, PO Box 1904, Flagstaff, AZ 86002.

Clair Kofoed is an Editor at Large for Shooting Sportsman.