BY JOHN LAWRENCE KOLBE (COLEBY) OR JOHANN GOTTFRIED KOLBE, LONDON, NO. 33, CIRCA 1735-45

Details

A Fine And Rare 70-Bore Breech-Loading Repeating 'Flintlock' Sporting Air Gun
By John Lawrence Kolbe (Coleby) or Johann Gottfried Kolbe, London, No. 33, circa 1735-45
With signed swamped four-stage sighted barrel (bruised at the breech) forming the air reservoir and engraved with a band of acanthus foliage at the rear, engraved brass tang with applied back-sight (replaced), shaped finely engraved serial numbered flat bevelled lock (safety device removed), moulded lightly carved figured walnut full stock (some damage, chips and cracks), magazine for balls situated in the fore-end and fitted with engraved sliding cover, air pump housed within the butt and with breathing aperture on the right, also with cover, finely cast and engraved brass mounts including elaborately pierced side-plate, and brass-capped wooden ramrod, the butt-plate engraved with armoury number '21'
36¼in. (92.1cm.) barrel

Provenance

The Gun Closet at Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorkshire: probably made for Thomas, 1st Marquess of Rockingham (d. 1750)
Described in the inventory of 1782, the year of the death of Charles, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, as 'No 21- Coulby's Wind Gun'

Literature

W. Keith Neal and D.H.L. Back, Great British Gunmakers 1740-1790, p. 100, plates 325, 335-6
Idem, Great British Gunmakers 1540-1740, pp. 467-8, plates 231a, b
Howard L. Blackmore, 'Who Was Kolbe?', J.A.A.S., vol. XIV, no. 2 (September 1992), p. 49

Exhibited

The Game Fair, Longleat House, 1962

Special notice

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

Lot Essay

For details of the two Kolbes see Blackmore, op. cit., pp. 41-63

Kolbe air guns of this type were made in small numbers (the highest recorded serial number is 54), the finest being the magnificent silver-mounted example in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no. M. 494-1894), believed to have been made for King George II, and doubtless Kolbe's masterpiece

An engraved diagram of Kolbe's invention is to be found in John Desaguliers, A Course of Experimental Philosophy, plate XXIV (see illustration)

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