soory if i wast clear
ill clear it up

the reason i said booleans is some people like to actially have
the text as part of the model - u can do it with other detailing aswell
i personally dont do this but there are a lot of people that do both on here and cgsociety then (s)he could just apply a simple blinn without the need to map the model

the other node based way was/is the best and is the alternative to actually modelling it into the model
however they will have to learn how to map without streches and seams

hope this clears up

also did u make it from nurbs or polys?
in polys u could just use a cyclinder and scale in the top with a loop part way down so its a cyclinder at the bottom and a cone/semisphere at the top

then like the post above select the faces of the cyclinder part and do a cyclindrical map
if u engrave in this section this is all the mapping u will need just move the rest of the uvs off of the cyclinder part