拍品 129
129
An Unusual 66-Bore German Sporting Air Rifle
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus bu… 顯示更多 Jagdschloß Kranichstein
An Unusual 66-Bore German Sporting Air Rifle

FIRST HALF OF THE 18TH CENTURY, PROBABLY BY JOHANN PETER BOSLER OF DARMSTADT

細節
An Unusual 66-Bore German Sporting Air Rifle
First half of the 18th Century, probably by Johann Peter Bosler of Darmstadt
With tapering iron turn-off barrel cut with eight grooves and with applied brass baluster ring at the front and rear, the one at the front bearing a brass bead fore-sight, brass action of square section engraved with interlaced scrollwork on a hatched ground and initials 'JB'(?), and with scroll engraved steel lock and brass standing back-sight, and turn-off leather-covered brass butt forming the air reservoir, with integral pump at the back and brass mounts engraved en suite with the action
35in. (88.9cm.) barrel
注意事項
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

拍品專文

Landgrave Ludwig VIII, for whom Johann Peter Bosler and his son Friedrich Jakob worked in succession as court gunmakers in Darmstadt, was a most ardent lover of air weapons, many of which remain at Kranichstein. A game book in the Schloßmuseum, Darmstadt records 'curious shots which his serene Highness...has fired since 1742...with airgun as in other ways, which here is collected with great care'. The kills are listed on several hundred pages, each with a poem and a painting of the quarry, usually by the Hofjadgmaler (court hunt-painter) Georg Adam Eger. One page (7 June 1749) describes a buck killed with an air rifle at 154 paces (see illustration). In 1747 he killed a 22-point stag weighing 480 lb., and in 1749 over 100 wild boar, all with his air rifles. See Arne Hoff, Airguns and Other Pneumatic Weapons, pp. 49-53