Lot 78
78
AN UNUSUAL GERMAN SNAPLOCK SPORTING RIFLE with octagonal swamped barrel rifled with seven grooves, signed and dated at the breech and struck with brass-filled maker's mark (Neue Støckel 447), flat lock with swing-out safety-steel and horizontally operating sear retaining the tail of the cock on the full cock position only, moulded walnut full stock (probably replaced during the rifle's working life, butt wormed, fore-end cracked) inlaid with engraved staghorn panels, iron mounts including indented trigger-guard, and horn-inlaid patch-box cover (ramrod missing), the barrel by Michael Gull of Vienna, dated 1656

Details
AN UNUSUAL GERMAN SNAPLOCK SPORTING RIFLE with octagonal swamped barrel rifled with seven grooves, signed and dated at the breech and struck with brass-filled maker's mark (Neue Støckel 447), flat lock with swing-out safety-steel and horizontally operating sear retaining the tail of the cock on the full cock position only, moulded walnut full stock (probably replaced during the rifle's working life, butt wormed, fore-end cracked) inlaid with engraved staghorn panels, iron mounts including indented trigger-guard, and horn-inlaid patch-box cover (ramrod missing), the barrel by Michael Gull of Vienna, dated 1656
29¼in. barrel [E.239, S.1]

Lot Essay

Michael Gull, Master in Vienna in 1647, died 1679, was the maker of a number of breech-loading long arms, wheel-lock, miquelet-lock and flintlock, some with a reloadable iron cartridge. The finest firearm to bear his signature is the ivory-stocked wheel-lock rifle made for Kaiser Leopold I in about 1665, preserved in the Waffensammlung, Vienna (Inv. No. D239)

See Hans Schedelmann, Die großen Büchsenmacher, pp. 138-140


John Hayward, The Art of the Gunmaker, vol I, p. 191, 198-9, 230; vol II, p. 2, 118

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