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A Very Fine Pair Of 20-Bore Silver-Mounted Over-And-Under Flintlock Holster Pistols

BY JOSEPH HEYLIN, CORNHILL, LONDON, LONDON SILVER HALLMARKS FOR 1760

Details

A Very Fine Pair Of 20-Bore Silver-Mounted Over-And-Under Flintlock Holster Pistols
By Joseph Heylin, Cornhill, London, London silver hallmarks for 1760
With slightly belled two-stage barrels, the border engraved octagonal breeches finely decorated with rococo scrollwork and martial trophies, the upper one signed within ribbons, finely engraved tangs each secured by two screws, right- and left-hand border engraved locks each with external mainspring and signed tail with further rococo decoration, moulded figured walnut butts (minor defects) each carved in relief with shells at the barrel tang, trigger-guards each engraved with a martial trophy, heavy spurred pommels cast and chased with flowers and foliage in relief on a punched ground, large cast and chased escutcheons, and original silver-tipped horn ramrods, one with worm (iron parts with some scattered light surface pitting), London proof marks, silver maker's mark JA
15½in. (39.4cm.) (2)

Provenance

Robert-Jean Charles (1904-1979), Paris, March 1938 for FF5,000 (according to a handwritten note in one barrel)

Literature

W. Keith Neal and D.H.L. Back, Great British Gunmakers 1740-1790, p. 109, plates 381-384

Exhibited

The Game Fair, Longleat House, 1962
The Art of the Armourer, Victoria and Albert Museum, 19 April - 5 May 1963, cat. no. 248
The Game Fair, Shuttleworth Old Warden Park, 27-29 July 2001

Special notice

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

Lot Essay

Joseph Heylin was made free of the Gunmakers' Company in 1757, and was Master in 1777. He is recorded as gunmaker and stone-bow maker at 48 Cornhill between 1757 and 1779, and he died in 1801
Noted for his brass-barrelled blunderbuss-pistols, he is also the maker of a pair of silver-mounted holster pistols with solid silver barrels and lock-plates in the collection of Norman Dixon (see Georgian Pistols, pp. 48-52, plates 34-35, and J.F. Hayward, The Art of the Gunmaker, vol. II, p. 203, plate 65)

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