Are Andrew Ross engraving calligraphic styles inconsistent?

**mhayashi** · 21-Apr-2021, 07:23

I recently bought Andrew Ross Portrait No.4 380mm f3.3.
I enjoy learning and looking up the histories of this lens.

The serial numer 2641 indicates circa 1855, thanks to Roseman.
The front and rear element diameters are 115mm. The lens covers 8x10 and even more.

I looked up vade mecum and A.Ross lens samples on internet. Ross engraving calligraphies seem to be inconsistent unlike Dallmeyer.... Each engraving samples of A.Ross have slightly different calligraphic styles. Also sometimes there is a dot after A, some don’t. there is a comma after Ross, some don’t. Maybe each craftsman of A.Ross might expressed who made the lens by different engraving calligraphic styles?? Any insights are appreciated.

At the time my sample was made, the stops were like washers as in here.

https://flic.kr/p/dmgFTq

The waterhouse slot was cut over the barrel after 1858(year of invention of waterhouse stop), after the production of the lens circa 1855 and the cut part with the engraving seemed put on the barrel in the opposite direction against the normal direction.

The original engraving position of the outer barrel must be the opposite side of the rack and pinion. A craftsman cut the outer barrel brass part for the waterhouse stop.

I have confirmed the ross engraving plate was taken from the original outer barrel, based on that the thickness of thin
part and thick part of the engraving plate match to the outer barrel thick part and thin part. I also identified the original position of the plate somewhere in the middle of the waterhouse cutout from the outer barrel.

I aligned the plate to anywhere on the cutout perimeters but didn’t match the cuts and the thin and thick part alignment is in the middle position as in the picture.

so the comma(,) if any was certainly lost because the engraving plate was in the middle of the cutout and unnecessary part was further cut off when attaching to the outer barrel.

The vade mecum says in this kind of conversion to waterhouse slot, the original engraving part is thrown away and a new engraving is made on the outer barrel. That was not the case to this
sample. The original engraving plate was kept by the craftsman kindly to keep the originality.