This powder horn uses the typically Berks County oblong base plug with an integrally turned button or stud for attaching the carrying strap. The plug is also characteristically turned not only with concentric incised and raised rings, but is undercut at the top to fully engage with the body of the horn. This horn preserves the external threading at the top end that would have secured the actual screw tip, which would have been decoratively turned as well.

Screw tip horns are often thought to have useful in refilling by the horn by unscrewing the tip to reveal a larger opening in the horn or itself being reversed and used as a funnel. More recently it has been suggested it is more the result of specialization within the shop, enabling different workers to concentrate on shaping the body of the horn, the plug, threading the top, and turning the tip, followed by assembly and finishing work. At least four shops are recognized as turning out horns of this pattern.

This one likely dates 1800-1825 or so. We see some faint writing on it, apparently in pencil. We can make out “your” followed by two words and then “horne” in a line below. We would guess at something like, “your grandfather so-and-so’s horn” or something close to that. The body of the horn has a pleasing, mellow cream color. The wood plug is a warm brown, with a few scratches, a short edge crack and some hairlines and a chip on the raised button at the center of the bottom, but is stable.

Along with the Pennsylvania rifle, the powder horn is a quintessentially American art form with less emphasis on pressing the horn into different shapes, sculpting it, or extravagant ornamentation than its European cousins that, like hunting itself, tended to be restricted to the nobility.  [sr][ph:m/L]

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