Hi I own a Colt 1911A1, I purchased maybe 30yrs ago serial number 25xxxxC which dates back to 1950's. My question is it's Scroll Engraved maybe 95% , how can I find out who done engraving and if it's Factory Engraved, any help would be greatly appreciated.
Only someone who is very familiar with engraving and engravers could really help answer that question {and we have a couple of notable such people on the forum}. I have been told that many engravers will " sign " their work in a out of the way place on the item in question, I can't attest to that fact personally but what the hey.
Most likely it wasn't factory engraved. One of my friends sends his pistols off to someone up north who does beautiful engraving work. All his Kimbers are engraved by the guy. Usually, factory engraving is done for commemorative pieces. Colt produced an engraved 1911 .45 as a commemorative pistol for Pearl Harbor. It has engraved images of ships on the slide. I have another friend who has one of them still boxed and never fired. The engraving on your pistol seems to be all scroll work so I suspect it was done after the pistol was purchased. Since the engraver and original owner of the pistol have quite likely passed to the great beyond, finding out sho did the engraving would be next to impossible.
Colt does maintain records of pistols they made so if you send them a mail with the serial number they should be able to tell you if it was factory engraved.
I tend to agree with Bill on this one. The engraver may be able to be identified by his style. I have a book titled American Engravers and it quite a few years old now. It covers about 30 to 40 engravers from the 60s -70s and earlier. It may be worth your time to research the engraver a bit more. Some names will add value to the gun. The grips look like Ivory.
Everyone has been awesome. I greatly appreciate everyone's help. I just don't understand why such beautiful scroll work engraved on pistol and artist not sign his work.
It may be signed. They can hide it pretty good and it can also be just a symbol. The book is by C Roger Bleile. It is copyrighted 1980.
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