A COMPOSITE GERMAN WHEEL-LOCK SPORTING RIFLE with swamped octagonal sighted barrel (back-sight missing) rifled with six grooves, signed flat lock with enclosed wheel finely engraved with a stag hunt in a landscape, the sky represented by a punched ground, the cock chiselled with Venus and Cupid in low relief, and the cock-bracket with a huntsman and a hound, full stock entirely covered with horn plaques finely engraved with strapwork, fruit, foliage and monsters, and scenes of the chase, in the manner of Virgil Solis, behind the barrel-tang the stockmaker's(?) initials EK conjoined, horn patch-box cover en suite, iron trigger-guard, and horn-tipped wooden ramrod, partly circa 1730, the lock signed Poser in Prag | Christie's

Lot 140

140

A COMPOSITE GERMAN WHEEL-LOCK SPORTING RIFLE with swamped octagonal sighted barrel (back-sight missing) rifled with six grooves, signed flat lock with enclosed wheel finely engraved with a stag hunt in a landscape, the sky represented by a punched ground, the cock chiselled with Venus and Cupid in low relief, and the cock-bracket with a huntsman and a hound, full stock entirely covered with horn plaques finely engraved with strapwork, fruit, foliage and monsters, and scenes of the chase, in the manner of Virgil Solis, behind the barrel-tang the stockmaker's(?) initials EK conjoined, horn patch-box cover en suite, iron trigger-guard, and horn-tipped wooden ramrod, partly circa 1730, the lock signed Poser in Prag

Details

A COMPOSITE GERMAN WHEEL-LOCK SPORTING RIFLE with swamped octagonal sighted barrel (back-sight missing) rifled with six grooves, signed flat lock with enclosed wheel finely engraved with a stag hunt in a landscape, the sky represented by a punched ground, the cock chiselled with Venus and Cupid in low relief, and the cock-bracket with a huntsman and a hound, full stock entirely covered with horn plaques finely engraved with strapwork, fruit, foliage and monsters, and scenes of the chase, in the manner of Virgil Solis, behind the barrel-tang the stockmaker's(?) initials EK conjoined, horn patch-box cover en suite, iron trigger-guard, and horn-tipped wooden ramrod, partly circa 1730, the lock signed Poser in Prag
28in. barrel

Lot Essay

The decoration on the lock is probably by Franz Matzenkopf, born in about 1705 in the village of Pontz in the Tirol. Apprenticed as a gunmaker in Vienna in 1721, he later moved to Prague, and eventually became a medal die-cutter at the Court of the Prince-Bishops of Salzburg. He died in 1776

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