A Fine Pair Of 38-Bore Austrian Wheel-Lock Sporting Rifles Stocked By The So-Called 'Meister der Tierkopfranke'
A Fine Pair Of 38-Bore Austrian Wheel-Lock Sporting Rifles Stocked By The So-Called 'Meister der Tierkopfranke'

DATED 1631

Details
A Fine Pair Of 38-Bore Austrian Wheel-Lock Sporting Rifles Stocked By The So-Called 'Meister der Tierkopfranke'
Dated 1631
With swamped octagonal sighted barrels each cut with eight grooves and stamped at the breech with maker's initials 'MS' flanking the date, plain tangs, one struck with an 'H', plain locks, the wheel-covers each with applied circular brass panel pierced with a stylised double-headed eagle, chiselled cocks and cock-springs, and slightly differing pans and manually operated pan-covers, full stocks (one chipped and cracked) partly inlaid with scrolls and rosettes in white staghorn between white staghorn lines (minor losses), and carved in relief with animals, monster-heads and tendrils, and on the underside below the lock with a rosette and a vase of flowers, sliding patch-box covers (one base-plate replaced, the other missing), cheek-pieces each with an engraved white staghorn panel (both incomplete, one replaced), and inlaid with an oval mother-of-pearl plaque engraved with a crest, a boar-spear within a wreath, iron trigger-guards, set triggers (one trigger-plate loose), engraved horn fore-end caps and ramrod-pipes (some replaced, one rear ramrod-pipe missing), horn butt-plates each with horn button, and later horn-tipped ramrods (iron parts with some minor pitting and areas of discolouration, one butt chipped on the upper edge of the patch-box, most of the barrel-pins missing)
32in. (81.9cm.) barrels (2)
Provenance
An Austrian private collection.
H.M. King Leopold of Belgium.
Literature
Hans Schedelmann, Die Wiener Bchsenmacher und Bchsenschfter, Berlin, 1944, p. 82, pl. XXII, no. 108.
Idem, 'The Master of the Animal-Head Scroll', Arms and Armor Annual, vol. I, Northfield, Illinois, 1973, p. 189, no. 8, illustrated on p. 86.

Lot Essay

Schedelmann's list of known works by this stockmaker includes three other pairs of rifles, amongst them that formerly in the armoury of the Princes zu Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck at Schlo Dyck, offered in these Rooms, 23 September 1992, lot 446. However at least one further (now divided) pair of rifles is known to exist.
For information on the 'Meister der Tierkopfranke' see footnote to lot 85 in the Rothschild sale.

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