CIRCA 1585, POSSIBLY NUREMBERG

Details

A FINE SOUTH GERMAN WHEEL-LOCK HOLSTER PISTOL (PUFFER)
circa 1585, possibly Nuremberg
With swamped barrel formed in two stages, chiselled with bands of leaves at the breech, the median and the muzzle and struck with Augsburg mark and maker's mark of Bernhard Albrecht (Neue Støckel 7008), plain flat lock, flat wheel-cover pierced and engraved with a pair of monsters, engraved safety-catch, and sliding pan-cover with button release, ebonised full stock profusely inlaid with a scheme of engraved horn plaques in the manner of the so-called 'Master of the Castles', including the figure of a classical warrior standing on a pedestal over the length of the butt, a pair of female figures in late 16th Century dress over the underside, and opposite the lock a cartouche filled with a battle scene from classical Roman history, a pair of small figures on combat with animals, two fortified towns at either end and all set within horn lines and border panels of cabling and strapwork, spherical pommel inlaid with a series of engraved horn roundel busts, both classical and contemporary, segmented by strips of gilt-copper cast with a relief pattern of strapwork, a basal collar en suite, and capped with a gilt-bronze relief roundel involving a pair of classical horsemen in combat above a Herculean subject, with iron trigger-guard, horn ramrod-pipes engraved with grotesque masks, and later ramrod with engraved horn tip (small cracks, small pieces of inlay replaced).
18½in (47cm)

Special notice

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Lot Essay

For a discussion of a similar pair of pistols stocked in the manner of the 'Master of the Castles' see Claude Blair, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor, Arms, Armour and Base-metalwork, 1974, Nos. 124-125.

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