BY PIRAUBE AUX GALLERIES A PARIS, DATED 1699

細節

A Fine 20-Bore French Flintlock Fowling-Piece
By Piraube Aux Galleries A Paris, dated 1699
With tapering barrel signed and dated on the interrupted sighting flat and with mouldings at the rear of the breech, later brass fore-sight, engraved tang, signed flat lock with engraved moulded border decorated with a bow and a quiver of arrows on the stepped tail, moulded figured walnut full stock (minor damage and repairs) carved in relief with scrollwork terminating in monster-heads at the barrel tang and rear ramrod-pipe, engraved chiselled iron mounts including scrolled side-plate involving an oval escutcheon, pierced and chiselled escutcheon involving a grotesque mask and surmounted by a coronet, moulded butt-plate engraved 'No: 26', four faceted ramrod-pipes, and associated wooden ramrod (some wear and light pitting, the latter mainly on the barrel)
44½in. (113cm.) barrel

出版

T. Lenk, The Flintlock, p. 110, plate 86

注意事項

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

拍品專文

Bertrand Piraube, gunmaker to King Louis XIV, was the most eminent and progressive of the Parisian late 17th- and early 18th-century gunsmiths, and the leader of European gunmaking fashion. He received his logement in the Louvre in 1670 and retained it until about 1725. He is the maker of many outstanding firearms, among them the superb silver-mounted gun in the Royal Armouries, Leeds (inv. no. XII. 1690), which is the only known 17th-century firearm with a solid silver barrel
The present gun is stylistically ahead of its time. Its flat lock-plate, cock, and steel, as well as the form of the mounts, are in line with innovations which Piraube had introduced by 1696, and were to remain in use for the following fifty years
Cf. a pair of Piraube pistols dated 1697 formerly in the Clay P. Bedford Collection, exhibited in Colonial Williamsburg in 1977 (Gusler and Lavin, cat. no. 12)