BY JOHN STUART, DATED 1703

Details

An Exceptional Scottish Flintlock Gun
By John Stuart, dated 1703
With sighted iron barrel signed and dated on the top flat, iron tang engraved with a tulip, signed rounded lock engraved with foliage, moulded walnut full stock carved in relief on the toe of the butt with a fern leaf, engraved brass mounts in the English manner, including pierced side-plate and escutcheon, turned brass ramrod-pipes, and iron-tipped ramrod
46in. (116.7cm.) barrel

Provenance

Alfred Cox, Glendoick, Perthshire
W. Keith Neal

Literature

Reid 1961, p. 262
Reid 1962, p. 157
Blair 1962, plate 316
Blair 1975, p.72, fig. 22
Blair (ed), p. 415, plate 317
Blair & Woosnam-Savage, p. 43, fig. 63
The Swords and the Sorrows, p. 65, cat. no. 5:2

Exhibited

The Second Centenary Loan Exhibition of Jacobite Relics and Rare Scottish Antiquities, Edinburgh, 1946, cat. no 146
Art of the Armourer, cat. no. 178
The Swords and the Sorrows, cat. no. 5:2

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.

Lot Essay

This is believed to be the only surviving Scottish long gun to have been made between 1700 and 1745. It is also the only one known with the conventional European style stock of the period

The maker of this gun was presumably the same as that of the silver-inlaid snaphaunce belt pistol signed 'Io. Stuart' and dated 1672 in the W. Keith Neal Collection, as well as that of a pair of pistols dated 1701 in the Seafield armoury (Blair 1975, fig. 32 - bottom), and a wooden-stocked heart-butt pistol in the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh (Blair 1975, fig. 33)

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