BY HENRY HADLEY, LONDON, LONDON SILVER HALLMARKS FOR 1769

Details

A Fine Pair Of 32-Bore Silver-Mounted D.B. Flintlock Pistols
By Henry Hadley, London, London silver hallmarks for 1769
With signed slightly belled barrels retaining much of their original blued finish and finely engraved with rococo flowers, foliage and scrollwork inhabited by birds, each breech and muzzle with two engraved bands of beadwork, the breeches also with two engraved gold lines, gold-lined touch-holes, silver fore-sights, grooved tangs finely engraved with rococo designs on a matted ground, finely engraved locks each with moulded border, engraved safety-catch, stepped tail, and gold-lined pan (one lock-retaining screw replaced), moulded finely figured walnut full stocks finely carved in relief with a shell behind the barrel tang (one stock with repaired butt, slight bruising, and minor chip from fore-end), full silver mounts finely cast and chased in relief with rococo ornament, engraved spurred pommels each with grotesque mask cap, engraved trigger-guards with shell finial, vacant escutcheons, single silver ramrod-pipes, and one original silver-tipped bone ramrod with worm (the other ramrod replaced), London proof marks and Foreigner's mark, silver maker's mark of John King
9½in. (24.1cm.) (2)

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

Henry Hadley is first recorded in the minutes of the Gunmakers' Company in 1735, and died in 1773. He moved from the Minories to the more fashionable West End of London in 1749, where he worked for an exalted clientèle, although he was never free of the Gunmakers' Company

He is especially noted for a series of silver-mounted pistols with Spanish-style barrels, including two pairs in the Royal Collection at Windsor (inv. nos. L 475, 494), a pair made for the Duke of Marlborough in the Royal Armouries, Leeds (inv. nos. XII. 1645/6), and another pair (the finest of the series), sold in these Rooms, 27 March 1996, lot 316 (£166,500, the world auction record for any European antique firearms). See Howard L. Blackmore, 'Henry Hadley, "Foreigner", and Four Pairs of his Pistols', The Connoisseur, October 1957, pp. 82-87

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