PROBABY BALKANS, PROBABLY IOANNINA OR BOKA, FIRST HALF 19TH CENTURY

The distinctive swallow-tail shaped stock of this fine long gun is associated with the Ottoman Balkans and the rich silver-gilt decoration to the body is typical of the silversmithing from Ioannina and Boka, although identifying the work of one from the other is difficult (Robert Elgood, The Arms of Greece and her Balkan neighbours in the Ottoman period, London, 2009, pp.236-37). The trophy of arms on the butt of the stock is very similar to that on a flintlock gun with silver work from Boka (op.cit., no.305, p.243). A similar device can also be seen on the nielloed silver-gilt stock of a gun probably made in Boka sold at Bonhams, London, 29 April 2015, lot 261 and to decorate the lock of a similarly shaped Balkan long gun in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (36.25.2219).

The chiselled decoration on the top of the barrel includes a grotesque mask motif next to the partially legible maker's name (possibly 'BALTHAUSSER MI....') is comparable to a mask on the Türkensteine in Vienna, erected in the late 18th century to commemorate the capture of Belgrade from the Ottomans. Balkan guns often used barrels and locks produced elsewhere and so it is possible that the gun barrel was made in Austro-Hungarian Eastern Europe, later making its way to the Balkans.