Lot 197
197
A RARE SWISS FLINTLOCK PISTOL with shortened octagonal gilt-brass barrel finely engraved with hatched flowers, scrolls and foliage on the breech and on the short pointed tang, bevelled gilt-brass lock with internal steel-spring and rounded cock, the plate finely engraved en suite with the barrel, highly figured rootwood full stock, gilt-brass mounts including pommel cast with a grotesque mask in high relief, gilt-brass fore-end cap, and wooden ramrod with gilt-brass tip, the lock, barrel and pommel by Felix Werder of Zürich, circa 1650-55, the remainder 18th Century

Details
A RARE SWISS FLINTLOCK PISTOL with shortened octagonal gilt-brass barrel finely engraved with hatched flowers, scrolls and foliage on the breech and on the short pointed tang, bevelled gilt-brass lock with internal steel-spring and rounded cock, the plate finely engraved en suite with the barrel, highly figured rootwood full stock, gilt-brass mounts including pommel cast with a grotesque mask in high relief, gilt-brass fore-end cap, and wooden ramrod with gilt-brass tip, the lock, barrel and pommel by Felix Werder of Zürich, circa 1650-55, the remainder 18th Century
16in.

Lot Essay

Felix Werder (1591-1673) gunmaker and goldsmith, was a member of the Zürich Goldsmith's guild, of which he became master in 1616. His earliest dated firearm was made in 1630. The lock of the present pistol is very similar to the locks found on the garniture of two pistols and a carbine, presented to the city authorities of Zürich in 1652, now divided between the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum (No.K.Z. 5316/17), and the Waffensammlung in Vienna (No.A-1454). In all some thirty firearms by Werder are known to have survived, most of them wheel-locks, and relatively few of them signed. Werder's innovation was the manufacture of thin brass barrels by a cold-hammering process

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