Never Bland

   In the mid-’60s, while in my early teens, I traveled to London and wandered the metropolis. I recall loitering in front of Thomas Bland’s gleaming windows hoping someone—anyone—would ask me in and show me the hardware. But no one ever did, shy impecunious schoolboys not figuring largely in Thomas Bland’s scheme of things. By the time I could conjure the confidence to walk through the door, Thomas Bland was gone.
    Never part of any gun trade tour, Bland was situated on William IV Street, which runs diagonally between the Strand and Tra-falgar Square. Despite the tony address and a façade that wouldn’t have looked out of place when Queen Victoria was a girl, Bland’s was not a purveyor of “best” guns only; rather the company’s reputation rested on magnums, big-bores and fowlers intended for the foreshore. Although Bland did offer a fine game gun with the earthbound tag “Best Quality Sidelock Ejector,” it was the guns named after wild geese, such as the Greylag and the Brent, that flew out the door.
    Despite the firm’s claims of an earlier beginning, Nigel Brown, in his definitive London Gunmakers, tells us, “The first record of Thomas Bland was at 41 Whittall St. Birmingham in 1862 and within five years the business had also taken in Nos 42 and 43.”
    Whittall Street was formerly a residential neighborhood, but the faded elegance of genteel Georgian façades constructed a century earlier hid, in the Victorian era, a multitude of small workshops typical of the Birmingham Gun Quarter. Originally townhouses for the well-to-do, workshops were created by conversion and extension into what had once been back gardens. The rise and fall of the British Empire can be read in the statistics of Whittall Street: In 1777 no gunmaker occupied premises there, in 1868 44 firms were located there, and by 1957 this number was down to seven.
    Few men have done more research on Birmingham’s gunmakers than Mike Newland of the Birmingham Museum, who has found two Thomas Blands listed as engravers for the period 1849 to ’50. One of these was located in “Court 6, Whittall Street” and may go a long way toward explaining The House of Bland’s claim of a startup date of 1840.
    In 1872 Thomas Bland’s son, also named Thomas, joined his father, and the company was renamed Thomas Bland & Son. In 1875 father and son expanded into retail with a storefront at 106 The Strand, London, and a decade later 62 South Castle Street, Liverpool. The Liverpool branch was still being listed in Kelly’s Directory of Engineers in 1886, and at least according to one source it lasted until 1892. Nigel Brown again: “The London premises prospered and by 1886 additional premises at 430 West Strand were opened, although this may well have been merely planning ahead since the original 106 Strand address was closed down in 1888.”
    When founding father Thomas Bland died in 1887, Thomas the Younger assumed the patriarch’s role and in 1901 moved to 22 King William Street. In May 1887 he successfully applied for a patent (British Patent No. 7054), consisting “of a diamond or substitute therfor [sic] to the front sight or the back sights, as shown in the figure.” The “figure” clearly illustrated fore sights for a double rifle. The intent appears to have been sights for low-visibility conditions. Bland’s fortunes followed the trajectory of Imperial success. When sportsmen in India and Africa demanded heavy rifles, Bland built them; when they needed big-bore handguns for personal protection, Bland supplied them.
    In December 1887 Bland together with F. Cashmore patented (No. 16,969) a four-barreled pistol. Clearly intended as a defensive weapon for Her Majesty’s forces abroad, it featured a single striker carried on a rotating block and appears in the patent drawings to be similar to the more familiar and, at least according to Geoffrey Boothroyd, more successful Lancaster.
     Neither was the Imperial police force forgotten; in 1888, under the heading “Sheath’s for truncheons,” Bland patented (No. 2760) a quick-release lid for truncheon cases, though the drawings feature what is clearly a belt-attachable cartridge pouch.
     At the turn of the 20th Century Thomas Bland supplied guns to two polar expeditions and described itself as an “outfitter” on both occasions. The first was the 1900 Italian North Pole expedition led by Luigi Amedeo, Duke of Abruzzi, on the ship Stella Polare, and the second was the Antarctic Relief Expedition, which was the first of two voyages undertaken to aid the British National Antarctic Expedition led by Scott. Bland’s involvement ceased with the end of the heroic age of exploration.
    Catalogs from this period feature a “B” inside a lozenge trademark and another with a honey bee surrounded by the motto “Par negotiis neque supra”: “Equal to, but not above, his business.” Occasionally the bee will be found impressed into composition-type buttplates with the motto replaced by a monogram of the letters “B” and “T” interwoven. For its specialty keeper’s gun, which was advertised as a “central-fire [hammer] breech loader in 10, 12, 14, 16 and 20 bores” and priced at six guineas, Bland introduced a unique trademark that, according to an advertisement, featured “the figure of a Keeper with his gun under his arm and accompanied by his Dog; in a circle with the words ‘THE KEEPER’S GUN.’” The reason for this was given in the same advertisement: “CAUTION—In consequence of the unfair competition to which they have been subjected, and the way in which other makers have sold inferior arms under the name of ‘The Keeper’s Gun,’ originally introduced into the trade by their Firm, Messrs. BLAND have been obliged, in self protection, to adopt a trade make for their ‘Keepers’ Guns and for the future no ‘Keeper’s’ Gun will be issued by them without having the Trade Mark on the heel-plate.” The ad appeared in The Modern Sportsman’s Gun and Rifle, by J.H.. Walsh, in 1882. The book also featured an engraving of a 4-bore Bland wildfowling gun that was nickel plated to protect it from saltwater corrosion.
    In 1906 T. Clifford Bland, the son of Thomas the Younger, came on board and steered Messrs Bland through the difficult period of The Great War. The Birmingham workshops were closed in 1919, likely the result of workers and clients having been killed or incapacitated during the war. At this time the London premises were relocated to 4-5 King William Street, which was renamed King William IV Street circa 1937. The firm became Thomas Bland & Sons (Gunmakers) Ltd. around 1936. Throughout this time Bland continued offering wildfowling guns, including the Greylag, a 3-inch 12-bore Anson & Deeley ejector gun with side panels.
    At about the same time I was suffering my adolescent longing, Bland issued a catalog that stated: “T. Clifford Bland joined the firm on leaving Harrow in 1906 and was a well-known expert on wild-fowling, which branch of the business he took special pride and interest in developing.”
    This same catalog featured repeaters and over/unders from Belgium and Italy as well as Birmingham-made Webley boxlocks and Bland’s Best Quality Sidelock Ejector Gun, priced at £280. In an uncertain postwar world, The House of Bland, as it called itself, was casting its nets as widely as possible in order to see where demand lay.
    In reality, Clifford Bland’s posturing as a public-school-educated wildfowl specialist was something of a chimera. The House of Bland could just as readily supply featherweight Churchill-style guns. In The Shooting Times “Christmas Number” of 1928, beneath a strap line reading “Established by Proprietor’s Grandfather in 1840,” Bland offered “The ‘Adelphos’ Ejector, very light and well balanced, 25" barrels, £26-5-0”. In other words, Bland offered featherweights or fowlers, depending on demand.
    If the firm differed from other London gunmakers in a significant way, it was in the stress its advertisements placed on “Harpoon guns for seal, porpoise, shark etc.” Throughout the hungry ’30s, ads in The Shooting Times offered a “Harpoon gun for big fish used from the shoulder” or “Harpoon guns for aquatic big game.” Today we have no idea how successful these entreaties really were.
    Clifford Bland died in 1943, and the business passed into the hands of Managing Director William Caseley. In 1948 Caseley was responsible for introducing the Brent, a non-ejector 12-bore gun with 3-inch chambers.
    Thomas Bland was not exempt from the decolonizing winds that blew throughout the 20th Century, cooling sales for all British gunmakers. The firm hung on by finding more modest premises at New Row, St. Martin’s Lane, in 1973 and expanding into sporting goods.
    At the end of 1987 Caseley wrote to clients informing them of impending closure and announcing: “We are sorry to say that we are closing down here on January 31st, 1988. This is due to the enormous increase in rents in London recently. Landlords have put us out of business when 147 years of business with all the wars in between could not.”
    On August 27, 1990, “The Company Name and Records of Thomas Bland & Sons (Gunmakers), including two reprinted volumes of their records dating back to approximately 1880 and a framed Photograph of a Set of Guns built for the Shah of Persia” were hammered down at Sotheby’s Gleneagles sale for £18,700, inclusive of a 10-percent buyer’s premium. Glenn O. Baker, a retired Pennsylvania State Police officer, was the buyer, and his willingness to spend suggested to some a certain confidence in the future of British gunmaking. In tune with this tiny hint of optimism, Baker has harnessed his talents to the cause of Bland’s revival. For a modest fee, he will research older Bland guns through records.
    Visitors to the Bland Website can read: “We offer you the opportunity to have a new best quality boxlock ejector in 12, 16, 20, 28 or .410 made to your desired specifications. Our new guns are available in your choice of barrel length, with full best color hardened actions and hardware or in coin finish and the style of engraving of your choice, from deep Holland & Holland style to game scenes or the standard English rose and scroll. You have the option of serial numbers being gold inlaid. All guns are stocked with the finest quality French or Turkish walnut. Your gun will come in a best quality English leather trunk case with accessories if you wish.” Prices start at $19,500, depending upon finish and case options. Bland also offers custom-made bolt-action rifles as well as a boxlock double rifle called The Cape.
    This prompted me to write to Baker, and in an e-mailed response he said, “We are today manufacturing: The Brent, which was and still is the wildfowling gun, as well as side-by-side sporting clays guns in boxlock A&D format. The Keepers Gun, which is your boxlock ejector gun or non-ejector as determined by the customer. The Fairmount, which has become the sidelock gun. Each gun is made to order as directed by each customer. They are Anglo/Italian manufactured, with the engraving done by top Italian engravers as ordered.
    “We are also in the process of sorting out the manufacture of under/over guns as well. We have not settled upon the name as yet.”
    Questions remain, however. Is Thomas Bland still a wildfowl specialist as T. Clifford Bland claimed? Will guns of Anglo/Italian manufacture compare to the Best Quality Sidelock Ejector featured in 50-year-old House of Bland catalogs? With Glenn Baker in charge, one thing is certain: The guns will never be bland.

Author’s Note: For more information, contact Thomas Bland & Sons, 570-864-3242; www.woodcockhill.com.

Douglas Tate is an Editor at Large for Shooting Sportsman.