16TH/17TH CENTURY

Details

An Extremely Rare 6-Bore Singhalese Snap-Lock Gun With Left-Hand Lock
16th/17th Century
Originally a matchlock, with earlier swamped russet twist sighted barrel with three raised mouldings at the breech and four panels of foliate mauresques in encrusted gold, the rectangular pan attached to the breech and fitted with a chiselled flash-shield on each side, the outer one hinged, flat bevelled "anselmo" lock set within a horn panel and with gold-encrusted decoration and chiselled details (dog catch replaced), carved hardwood full stock (chipped and repaired in several places, inset panel on the upper side of the butt replaced in lead), scrolled bifurcated butt, finely chiselled and pierced iron trigger-guard, pierced trigger, and later barrel bands and ramrod (iron parts pitted, some loss of gold)
42¾in. (108.6cm.) barrel

Literature

Howard L. Blackmore, Guns and Rifles of the World, p. 100, no. 276

Special notice

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

Lot Essay

For an account of early Portuguese and Portuguese Colonial gunmaking see Rainer Daehnhardt, Early Gunmaking in the Portuguese World, 1450-1650, passim
A more highly decorated example of the present type of gun, also with left-hand lock, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 91.1.907)
The butt of the present gun retains the corner of an old glued paper label bearing a printed design believed to be typical of the Kerala coast in Southern India, and to be found in the decoration of the so-called 'Dutch' Palace of the Raja of Cochin, a 16th-century wooden palace built by the Portuguese as a conciliatory gift to the Raja after the destruction of a temple

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