BY EDMUND GIFFARD, LONDON, CIRCA 1690

Details

A Fine Pair Of 18-Bore Flintlock Holster Pistols
By Edmund Giffard, London, circa 1690
With swamped heavy three-stage sighted barrels, the breech sections octagonal then polygonal, signed on the top flat and engraved with a band of ornament at the front and rear, tangs engraved with strawberry foliage, signed rounded locks engraved with further strawberry foliage, terminating in a monster-head on the tail (two cocks and one steel replaced), moulded flame-burnt ash full stocks each with pronounced swelling near the ramrod tail-pipe, and raised apron at the barrel tang (minor cracks and bruising), iron mounts, pierced scroll side-plates engraved with beadwork, engraved spurred pommels each with stepped oval cap, shaped escutcheons each engraved with the crest and coronet of the Barons Leigh of Stoneleigh, baluster ramrod-pipes (one later), and original iron-capped ramrods
21½in. (54.6cm.) (2)

Provenance

Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire

Literature

W. Keith Neal and D.H.L. Back, Great British Gunmakers 1540-1740, pp. 218-19, plates 76a-c

Special notice

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

Lot Essay

Edmund Giffard was free of the Gunmakers' Company in 1667, Gunsmith-in-Ordinary to King Charles II in 1670, and, in partnership with John Shaw, to Prince Rupert at Whitehall, circa 1675-80. The last documentary reference to him is in 1704

Giffard is represented by a fine pair of double-lock two-shot superimposed-load holster pistols in the armoury of the Duke of Buccleuch at Boughton House (illustrated in Tessa Murchoch (ed.), Boughton House, The English Versailles, p. 167, fig. 174)

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