BY HENRY CRISP, LONDON, CIRCA 1680-90

Details

A Fine Flintlock Blunderbuss
By Henry Crisp, London, circa 1680-90
With massive brass barrel with a ring at the belled muzzle, the breech engraved with symmetrical interlaced strawberry foliage surmounted by a caricature portrait bust of a man wearing a night-cap, and inscribed with the name of the original owner 'S.r Rob.t Owen', at the rear a notched ramp, foliate engraved iron tang, rounded lock engraved with strawberry foliage, a devil- and a monster-head, and signed 'H. Crisp' and 'In Tower' (comb of cock replaced), figured full stock (minor repairs) with raised apron at the barrel tang, engraved brass mounts including flat butt-plate with long tang, and pierced serpentine side-plate, shaped escutcheon engraved with a caricature profile bust, single turned brass ramrod-pipe, and later brass-capped ramrod, London proof marks, barrel-forger's mark TW
42½in. (108cm.)

Literature

W. Keith Neal and D.H.L. Back, Great British Gunmakers 1540-1740, p. 159, plates 48a, b, 49a

Special notice

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

Lot Essay

Henry Crisp (or Crips), apprenticed to Humphrey Pye in 1668, was free of the Gunmakers' Company in 1676, and Gunmaker to Ordnance and Furbisher at the Tower of London 1680-1707. He died in 1710

Crisp is the maker of a fine pair of blunderbusses in the W. Keith Neal Collection (op. cit., colour plate XIII), and of the earliest known English firearm with a full set of silver hallmarks (for 1688), on a gun made for the Earl of Dartmouth. For further information on the maker see Neal and Back, op. cit., pp. 155-157

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