BY JOHN 3 WILLIAMS, LONDON, CIRCA 1715

Details

A Fine Pair of 19-Bore Silver-Mounted Flintlock Turn-Off Pistols
By John 3 Williams, London, circa 1715
With three-stage cannon barrels each engraved with a band of foliage at the rear and with pronounced moulding at the muzzle, engraved tangs, border engraved actions each signed below the steel-spring (one jaw-screw replaced), safety-catches, swelling moulded figured walnut butts each with raised foliate apron at the barrel tang, cast and chased silver mounts comprising pierced foliate side-plates, shaped foliate escutcheons, and large pommels (one later) decorated in relief with monsters and a grotesque mask, and separate iron trigger-guards each with foliate finial, London proof marks
12in. (30.5cm.) (2)

Special notice

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

Lot Essay

The maker (d. 1731) was free of the Gunmakers' Company in 1700, and Master in 1728

Cf. a very similar pair of pistols by John Hall, formerly in the Clay P. Bedford Collection, exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 1971 (cat. no. 55)

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