April 2014 – Message from the Guildmaster

This is my first “Message from the Guilmaster.” Jeff Bibb is a tough act to follow as Guildmaster, but I will do my best. It is indeed an honor to have the opportunity to try to keep up the pace of our previous Guildmasters and their accomplishments in expanding membership and national stature of the Guild as a dominant source of educational information about the “Art” of hornwork past and present.

The 2014 Annual Meeting at Carlisle was successful by all accounts I have heard thus far. The banquet was near capacity of the room and lots of folks hung around talking after the event. Four members advanced to Journeyman status and Carl Dumke to Master. Our new Journeymen are: Rick Sheets, Don Fererro, Clint Byers, and Glen Sutt. I was able to muster a bleat out of the beautiful Guildmaster’s horn to signal closure of the meeting. The membership in the general meeting Saturday morning approved my selection of Tom Ames as Guildmaster elect to succeed me whom they approved as the Guild’s Guildmaster.

My wife Regina pondered why me as Guildmaster and “couldn’t I just say NO when asked?” I resorted to blaming Roland for lack of a better reason. Why Roland?

My story is that I reluctantly purchased a powder horn with my wife along at a local flea market for the lordly sum of $35.00 about 20 years ago. I hesitated with the purchase because it had brass tacks holding the large butt plug in. I thought it might be of a western origin. The seller said $35.00 was firm or he would take it back up north to the Lambertville, NJ flea market and get $75.00 for it. I gambled on the old feel of the horn and bought it.

The horn had a cherry wood tip that to my eyes, matched the age of the rest of the horn.  A year or two later I was told a Roland Cadle was the horn expert and was given his phone number and surprise he answered, this being before he got a cell phone, and I described the horn. He surmised, if original, it was Burks County with a replacement tip.  I was going to Mansker’s Station that year and he said he was too. Lee Larkin was set up on the front lawn of the house there with a bunch of horns so I asked him if he could point out Roland. He could and did. Roland said Yep it was old, definitely early Eastern and needed a correct tip, so I asked him to make one. He took the horn home and sent it back with its new tip a week or two later.

It was at that Mansker’s Station Market Fair that there was a huge heap of Jim Dressler’s horns on table display in the House with a policeman guarding them so that we could only look. I saw Roland later with a serious group deep in discussion about horns like the Pied Piper entrancing the children. Thus was the genesis of the Guild I think.

Fact is Roland was not right about the tip and fortunately for me had not thrown the cherry tip away. Subsequent discussing had produced talk of other cherry tips being known of and we both learned a fact. By then I was a child following the Piper’s every espousal and that’s why it is Roland’s fault that I am today Guildmaster. The horn style is today shown as Upper Delaware Valley in Art DeCamp’s. “Horns of the Trade.”

This is book should be on the bookshelf of every serious horner.

Now back to news of present times… Dixon’s Gunmakers Fair is just a few months away and I am sure we will have the fine representation of our HCH membership as has become the tradition. We will not have the Summer Banquet at Jacobsburg this year. We have a new venue and it will be closer to the Dixon’s Gunmakers Fair.

Stay tuned on the big change for the Summer Banquet. We will be posting the details soon on the website!

Best regards,

Dick Toone
Guildmaster