A couple recent finds:
The larger set, for a High Standard .22 pistol, I found over the winter. They're unmarked as to maker but have finger grooves on one panel and a lot of interesting swirling in the material the picture doesn't quite capture. The smaller set I found just the other day and haven't figured out what they fit yet (maybe a Colt 1902?) but these have an old sticker on the back and, upon researching this, was pleased to find out they were made by Maurice D. Scharlack (most resources online misspell his last name) of Corpus Christi, Texas who supposedly was the developer of Catalin material and made the grips for John Wayne's famous movie pistols.
From the Internet Movie Firearms Database:
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/True_Grit_(1969)
Quote:
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All three of these guns were fitted with ivory-style grips (manufactured by Maurice D. Scarlac out of a material he developed called Catalin). Wayne like them so much that he took these grips home and personally "tea-stained" them to give them that desirable "mellow aged ivory" look. Two sets of these grips were made for Wayne (the second set being a spair just in case if the first set broke). These grips all had three finger grooves in the left-hand side of the grips for Wayne middle, ring, and "little" fingers of Wayne's right hand for as they wrapped around the revolvers grip frame. The grooves can be clearly seen in the climactic gunfight between Rooster and "Lucky" Ned Pepper and his gang when Rooster has the gun tucked in his waist band.
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Further online research tells me Scharlack, a lawyer, was a rather infamous numismatist, or collector (some say a hoarder) of coins among other items.