A RARE MATCHED PAIR OF GERMAN SPORTING CROSSBOWS each with robust steel bow painted black and struck with a mark, original retaining cords (strings missing), wooden tillers swelling towards the middle and veneered in panels of palisander wood and white staghorn, the horn panels finely engraved with designs of running foliage against a hatched blackened ground, and along the top and bottom with foliage and scrollwork involving grotesque masks, the former with a line of four human masks behind the horn nut, original woollen tassels (four missing), folding adjustable peep-sights, steel lugs for cranequin, small stirrups, serrated thumb-bars, trigger-levers each bound with original cord, swivel safety-catches, and folding set triggers (one set trigger incomplete, horn bolt-clips missing, one butt-plate replaced), late 16th Century | Christie's

Lot 102

102

A RARE MATCHED PAIR OF GERMAN SPORTING CROSSBOWS each with robust steel bow painted black and struck with a mark, original retaining cords (strings missing), wooden tillers swelling towards the middle and veneered in panels of palisander wood and white staghorn, the horn panels finely engraved with designs of running foliage against a hatched blackened ground, and along the top and bottom with foliage and scrollwork involving grotesque masks, the former with a line of four human masks behind the horn nut, original woollen tassels (four missing), folding adjustable peep-sights, steel lugs for cranequin, small stirrups, serrated thumb-bars, trigger-levers each bound with original cord, swivel safety-catches, and folding set triggers (one set trigger incomplete, horn bolt-clips missing, one butt-plate replaced), late 16th Century

Details

A RARE MATCHED PAIR OF GERMAN SPORTING CROSSBOWS each with robust steel bow painted black and struck with a mark, original retaining cords (strings missing), wooden tillers swelling towards the middle and veneered in panels of palisander wood and white staghorn, the horn panels finely engraved with designs of running foliage against a hatched blackened ground, and along the top and bottom with foliage and scrollwork involving grotesque masks, the former with a line of four human masks behind the horn nut, original woollen tassels (four missing), folding adjustable peep-sights, steel lugs for cranequin, small stirrups, serrated thumb-bars, trigger-levers each bound with original cord, swivel safety-catches, and folding set triggers (one set trigger incomplete, horn bolt-clips missing, one butt-plate replaced), late 16th Century
23¾in. (2)

Lot Essay

The trigger mechanisms are set by inserting rods into holes in the stocks and are cocked by pulling a cord which passes through each trigger-plate

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