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DATED 1738
Details
A 38-Bore German Wheel-Lock Sporting Rifle
Dated 1738
With earlier swamped octagonal sighted barrel cut with seven grooves and signed 'Caspar Neireiter in Prag' on the breech, flat lock engraved with a stag-hunt and sportsmen in a wooded landscape, flat cock engraved with a hound and a stag, full stock profusely inlaid with white horn tendrils and pellets enclosing pierced and engraved white staghorn plaques decorated with foliage, strapwork, grotesques, monsters, mythological figures, allegorical figures representing Europe, Africa and America, some within elaborate cartouches, opposite the lock two sportsmen, and on the underside of the butt a female nude supporting a scroll engraved with the date, sliding patch-box cover en suite and inlaid with a figure representing Asia, its base-plate engraved with the stockmaker's initials 'ELH', staghorn butt-plate engraved with owner's coat-of-arms, carved staghorn ramrod-pipes and fore-end cap, cast and chased brass trigger-guard, set trigger, and wooden ramrod with engraved horn tip
33in. (83.8cm.) barrel
Dated 1738
With earlier swamped octagonal sighted barrel cut with seven grooves and signed 'Caspar Neireiter in Prag' on the breech, flat lock engraved with a stag-hunt and sportsmen in a wooded landscape, flat cock engraved with a hound and a stag, full stock profusely inlaid with white horn tendrils and pellets enclosing pierced and engraved white staghorn plaques decorated with foliage, strapwork, grotesques, monsters, mythological figures, allegorical figures representing Europe, Africa and America, some within elaborate cartouches, opposite the lock two sportsmen, and on the underside of the butt a female nude supporting a scroll engraved with the date, sliding patch-box cover en suite and inlaid with a figure representing Asia, its base-plate engraved with the stockmaker's initials 'ELH', staghorn butt-plate engraved with owner's coat-of-arms, carved staghorn ramrod-pipes and fore-end cap, cast and chased brass trigger-guard, set trigger, and wooden ramrod with engraved horn tip
33in. (83.8cm.) barrel
Provenance
James Hazen Hyde
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Sotheby & Co., New York, 6 June 1994, lot 390
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Sotheby & Co., New York, 6 June 1994, lot 390
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.