A Rare 12-Bore Breech-Loading Percussion Blunderbuss-Pistol On The Clanricarde System
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A Rare 12-Bore Breech-Loading Percussion Blunderbuss-Pistol On The Clanricarde System

BY JAMES WILKINSON & SON, PALL MALL, LONDON, NO. 4370 FOR 1832

Details
A Rare 12-Bore Breech-Loading Percussion Blunderbuss-Pistol On The Clanricarde System
By James Wilkinson & Son, Pall Mall, London, No. 4370 for 1832
With browned twist sighted barrel with belled flattened oval muzzle and engraved with foliage at the muzzle and breech, foliate engraved case-hardened action with sliding tip-up chamber, the top plate signed 'Wilkinson & Son Pall Mall London' on three scrolls, at the rear a pivoting block with engraved case-hardened locking lever, and at the front a blued thumb-plate with chequered finial, scroll engraved case-hardened tang incorporating the back-sight, signed scroll engraved case-hardened back-action lock, figured walnut half-stock (some bruising), flattened chequered butt cut for a shoulder stock, scroll engraved blued iron mounts, case-hardened trigger-plate with pineapple finial, silver escutcheon, and most of its original finish, London proof marks
15 7/8in. (40.4cm.)
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

This pistol was finished on 28 February 1832, and sold to Mrs. Anne Cooper
J. de Burgh, Marquis of Clanricarde, patented his system on 15 July 1831 (British Patent No. 6139). The chamber is designed to accept a paper cartridge containing twelve quarter-circle projectiles, a charge of powder, and a detonating cap which was removed and placed on the nipple. The inventor claimed that the projectiles 'will be so scattered laterally by the flattened bell shaped end of the barrel as to constitute a most formidable weapon of defence'

See Lewis Winant, Firearms Curiosa, p. 256, plates 301-2; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Early Firearms of Great Britain and Ireland From The Collection of Clay P. Bedford, p. 127, cat. no. 132

Cf. the cased example (No. 4376) sold from the W. Keith Neal Collection at Christie's, King Street, on 9 November 2000, lot 168 (£52, 875 including premium)

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