A VERY RARE 25-BORE BREECH-LOADING FLINTLOCK RIFLE

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A VERY RARE 25-BORE BREECH-LOADING FLINTLOCK RIFLE

BY HARMAN BARNE, LONDON, CIRCA 1660

With sighted two-stage barrel with pronounced muzzle ring (replaced) and cut with eight grooves, hinged horizontally at the breech and released by depressing the front of the trigger-guard, the hinge with sprung flange engraved with a wildfowler, reloadable iron cartridge with touch-hole, rounded back-action lock engraved with scrollwork and a demon smoking a pipe and signed within a swirl of smoke, the steel with engraved priming magazine and chiselled details, the action with long top-strap, and shaped side-plate with applied short belt hook, moulded walnut butt, short fore-end (repaired), and iron mounts including butt-plate with long tang (iron parts lightly pitted, belt hook and parts of the action replaced)
27¾in. barrel

Lot Essay

Only two other examples of this system are known; one in a private collection, believed to be by Harman Barne, and another, signed Acqua Fresca, in the City Museum, Birmingham, illustrated in Howard L. Blackmore Guns and Rifles of the World, plates 425-6

Harman Barne probably came to this country with Prince Rupert in 1642. He was gunsmith to the royalist forces in the Civil War at Oxford, Raglan Castle and Bristol. Free of the Gunmakers' Company by redemption in 1657, he was appointed Handgun Maker to Charles II in 1660, and died in 1661

For other examples of his work see W. Keith Neal and D.H.L. Back, Great British Gunmakers 1540-1740, pp. 104-117. See also J.F. Hayward, The Art of the Gunmaker, vol. I, pp. 212-5

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