A Highly Unusual 22-Bore German Wheel-Lock Holster Pistol With The Arms Of Archduke Matthias Of Austria (1557-1619), King Of Hungary (1608-18) And Of Bohemia (1611-17)

EARLY 17TH CENTURY

Details

A Highly Unusual 22-Bore German Wheel-Lock Holster Pistol With The Arms Of Archduke Matthias Of Austria (1557-1619), King Of Hungary (1608-18) And Of Bohemia (1611-17)
Early 17th Century
With swamped three-stage sighted barrel octagonal at the breech, plain flat lock with reblued domed wheel-cover, flat cock, and sliding pan-cover with slotted release button, fruitwood full stock with unusual integral octagonal pommel finely inlaid throughout with white staghorn lines enclosing scrollwork bearing engraved leaves and buds, festoons of foliage arranged in straight lines between pellets, and engraved shaped panels, some engraved with marine monsters (two panels replaced at the front of the lock), the spine of the butt and pommel with a concealed flush-fitting extension to the rear of the barrel tang allowing the pistol to be fired from the cheek, the left side of the extension fitted with a spring-loaded flap to prevent its closure when in the raised position, the pommel inset with a circular white staghorn medallion engraved with the crowned arms of the Archduke, iron trigger-guard, engraved staghorn fore-end cap, and later horn-tipped ramrod
23in. (59.7cm.)

Lot Essay

The butt-extension on this pistol, which has every appearance of being part of its original design, is apparently unrecorded elsewhere.
Integral ball pommels are mainly found on wheel-lock pistols of the third quarter of the 16th Century - for instance several in the Muse d'art et l'histoire, Geneva (e.g. nos. 56-59, described and illustrated in Jos-A. Godoy, Armes Feu XVe-XVIIe Sicle, Geneva, 1993).
However, assuming the coat-of-arms to be correctly engraved, and original to the pommel, the pistol must date from between 1608 and 1612, which is close to the date of a wheel-lock rifle in the Victoria and Albert Museum (no. 2240-1855), that is dated 1605, and has a lock of similar form.

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