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Hi Morten

Firstly Boss was started by Thomas Boss in 1812 after he had finished his apprenticeship at Joseph Manton, the worlds best gunmaker, so if Boss really wants to celebrate a bicentenary (200 years celebration) then perhaps they should base their bicentenary gun on the man who started the business. I understand Mr. Roberts played a very important part in Boss's history, but if the bicentenary was to celebrate him then you would have to wait until 2091, as he first joined the company in 1891.

Therefore I do not understand why Mr. Robertson is engraved on the gun, as he only represents a relatively small part (although important part ) of Boss's history. If Boss absolutely had to feature someone on the base plate then perhaps Thomas Boss would have been more fitting.

I have owned several guns over the years with human portraits engraved on them and generally I find them very difficult to sell. As Mr. Mike Bailey posted earlier, you either love or hate the person engraved on the gun, so its back to personal choice. For this reason I would not have chosen to put anyones portrait on the gun.

That said, Mr. Coggan did an excellent job of the engraving and this is one of the best portraits I ever saw engraved on a gun other than those of naked women on the fantasy art guns engraved by Manrico Torcoli or Fracassi.

So to answer your question, to represent Boss's 200 years I would have chosen a more regency style / Georgian style / neo-classic stlye of engraving - something which portrayed elegance and lightness of touch. Perhaps a Rococo style with deep chiseled panels coved in a layer of detailed gold lattice. Classicism was the most fashionable style in Britain during the Regency period. Forms and motifs from ancient Greece and Rome were the basis of the style. To these were added elements taken from nature, from the arts of ancient Egypt and from French design of the mid-18th century. The combination of different patterns and colours made Regency Classicism a visually rich style.

For Boss's bicentenary gun I would have focused on this visually rich style, something of extra ordinary quality, which reflected the period 200 years ago, and 200 years of history, and not on a combination of deep scroll and bulino engraving, which looks to me like the work on an Italian Rossini!

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James Etherington-Thorpe - a man's reputation can be known by his words. Read Mr Thorpe's comments and judge his character by his own words and attitudes.