A VERY FINE ENGLISH FLINTLOCK BREECH-LOADING REPEATING GUN on the so-called 'Lorenzoni system' with swamped two-stage barrel and tall crescentic fore-sight, signed breech chiselled with scrollwork in relief and engraved with strawberry foliage, the frame, magazine covers, and signed back-action lock also engraved with strawberry foliage, the barrel tang chiselled in relief with scrollwork and a moustached grotesque mask and engraved with a trophy of arms centred on a further grotesque mask, brass revolving breech block, engraved and chiselled iron lever engraved with the date 1586 (sic) and with baluster finial, moulded highly figured burr walnut butt drilled with the magazines for bullets and powder, engraved and chiselled iron butt-cap with finial formed as a marine monster, and engraved and chiselled iron trigger-guard with pierced foliate finial, by John Cookson, circa 1685

Details

A VERY FINE ENGLISH FLINTLOCK BREECH-LOADING REPEATING GUN on the so-called 'Lorenzoni system' with swamped two-stage barrel and tall crescentic fore-sight, signed breech chiselled with scrollwork in relief and engraved with strawberry foliage, the frame, magazine covers, and signed back-action lock also engraved with strawberry foliage, the barrel tang chiselled in relief with scrollwork and a moustached grotesque mask and engraved with a trophy of arms centred on a further grotesque mask, brass revolving breech block, engraved and chiselled iron lever engraved with the date 1586 (sic) and with baluster finial, moulded highly figured burr walnut butt drilled with the magazines for bullets and powder, engraved and chiselled iron butt-cap with finial formed as a marine monster, and engraved and chiselled iron trigger-guard with pierced foliate finial, by John Cookson, circa 1685
33in. barrel

Provenance

In the United States before 1863, when it was confiscated by the provost marshal. Unclaimed at the end of the Civil War
Acquired in 1888 by Richard Heinze, a Baltimore gunsmith, who sold it to A.E. Brooks, of Hartford, Conn. on 24 September 1891
United States Cartridge Company
William M. Locke (1894-1972)

Literature

Catalogue of the A.E. Brooks Collection, pp. 239-241
Catalogue of the United States Cartridge Co. Collection, pp. 16-19 The William M. Locke Collection, p.486
Howard L. Blackmore, Guns and Rifles of the World, No. 662-3

Lot Essay

Only three guns of this type by Cookson are so far recorded, the other two being in the Victoria and Albert Museum (No. 77 - 1893), and the Milwaukee Museum, Wisconsin (No. N.6316). The present gun is the most highly worked of the three
It is not known where Cookson worked, although Major H.B.C. Pollard mentions an example signed 'John Cookson fecit Londini 1666', without quoting his source (A History of Firearms, p. 71).
The John Cookson who is recorded as living in Boston, Massachusetts between 1701 and 1762, and who advertised similar guns for sale, is widely assumed to have been the son of the maker of the present gun.
Although the breech-loading magazine system employed is usually termed the 'Lorenzoni System' after the Florentine gunmaker Michele Lorenzoni, it is not certain to which European gunmaker the credit for its invention should be given. A much quoted reference to the system in the diaries of Samuel Pepys dates back to 1662. On 3 July he refers to 'a gun to discharge seven times, the best of all devices I ever saw, and very servicable, and not a bauble; for it is much approved of, and many made thereof'. Despite this eulogy the incidence of explosion in the powder magazines probably explains the great rarity of such firearms today

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