BY JOHANN CHRISTOPH BOESSEL, SUHL, EARLY 18TH CENTURY

Details

A Highly Unusual 21-Bore German D.B. Flintlock Sporting Gun
By Johann Christoph Boessel, Suhl, early 18th Century
With separate twist barrels without ribs retaining almost all their original blued finish and signed in script across the communal flat at the breeches, three sliding shaped blued iron barrel bands acting also as ramrod-pipes, the front band with integral fore-sight, lightly engraved shaped tang grooved for sighting, rounded locks each signed in script (the left one in mirror writing), and with moulded border, blued top jaw, screw, pan, and steel-spring, moulded figured walnut half-stock carved in relief with foliage behind the barrel tang and at the ends of the cheek-piece, iron mounts with finely chiselled foliate finials, blued trigger-plate, horn fore-end cap, and original horn-tipped ramrod, the butt-plate engraved 'No 66', in very fine little-used condition throughout
39½in. (100.3cm.) barrels

Special notice

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

Lot Essay

Double guns with separate side-by-side barrels date mostly from the first quarter of the 18th century and are almost exclusively French ('fusils à bande')
See Arne Hoff, Feuerwaffen, vol. II, pp. 40-41, plates 28 a, b, and D.H.L. Back, 'The use of Double Barrel Guns for Sporting Purposes in the Eighteenth Century', The Fifth Park Lane Arms Fair, February 1988, pp. 7-8, plates 1-3

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