拍品 263
263
A Rare Cased Pair Of 38-Bore Flintlock Box-Lock Pocket Pistols
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus bu… 显示更多
A Rare Cased Pair Of 38-Bore Flintlock Box-Lock Pocket Pistols

BY JOHN TWIGG, LONDON, CIRCA 1766-1775

细节
A Rare Cased Pair Of 38-Bore Flintlock Box-Lock Pocket Pistols
By John Twigg, London, circa 1766-1775
With fixed barrels carrying two iron ramrod-pipes, and each with detachable pan and steel assembly, leaving only the raised central touch-hole in place, border engraved actions decorated with foliage and signed within ribbons, robust thumbpiece safety-catches also locking the steels, engraved trigger-guards, sharply curved flat-sided figured walnut butts, and horn-tipped ramrods (one expertly replaced): in mahogany case lined in green baize (partitions incomplete) with a 19th-century cleaning rod and powder-flask, London proof marks
7in. (17.7cm.)
出版
W. Keith Neal and D.H.L. Back, Great British Gunmakers 1740-1790, pp. 54, 162, plates 143, 146
注意事项
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

拍品专文

The late owner's handwritten note in the case reads: 'These Twigg pistols are in their original case. It was made to fit them with the locks at half cock only. So this is why they do not fit so well now with the cocks down and the centre division removed'

For a discussion of this type of detachable pan and steel, the purpose of which is obscure, see Jonathan Barrett, 'Six Oddities of English Flintlock Construction', Art, Arms and Armour, vol. 1, pp. 393-4. The system was used by at least three leading London firms - Twigg, Wogdon, and Griffin & Tow