BY LAURENT LE LANGUEDOC À PARIS, DATED 1716

Details

An 18-Bore French Flintlock Fowling-Piece
By Laurent le Languedoc à Paris, dated 1716
With tapering barrel with sighting flat over most of its length and silver fore-sight, the breech section engraved with strapwork forming shaped panels, and on the upper side with the maker's double 'L' monogram, shaped tang finely engraved with scrollwork on a dotted ground, signed and dated flat lock with moulded border engraved with a scene of the chase, and with stepped tail and chiselled steel (cock expertly replaced), moulded figured walnut full stock (minor chips and cracks) carved in relief with scrolls and foliage at the barrel tang and rear ramrod-pipe, chiselled iron mounts, the side-plate involving an oval escutcheon engraved with owner's coronet and monogram, the butt-plate dated on the tang and engraved 'No. 9', four fluted ramrod-pipes, and iron-capped wooden ramrod (iron parts with areas of minor surface pitting)
46¼in. (117.5cm.) barrel

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

Le Languedoc (recorded 1684-1733), gunmaker to King Louis XIV, was one of the leading lights of Parisian gunmaking in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, although he never obtained logement in the Galeries du Louvre. His work is well known through the Simonin pattern books. Like Piraube, he received numerous commissions from the King of Saxony. The Historisches Museum in Dresden still contains twenty-two fowling-pieces and five pairs of pistols by him

See J.F. Hayward, The Art of the Gunmaker, vol. I, pp. 44, 46, 294, 295 and 297

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