Peter Finer 38 & 39 DUKE STREET ST JAMES’S LONDON SW1Y 6DF ENGLAND telephone :
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The Cataloguing Team ian d. d. eaves, fsa, is a freelance consultant specialising in arms and armour. He was formerly Keeper of Armour at the Royal Armouries at The Tower of London where he worked for eighteen years. In 1993 he was awarded the Arms and Armour Society’s medal for services to the study of arms and armour. In March 2007 he was elected lifetime VicePresident of the Arms and Armour Society. For over thirty years he has written widely, and many of his research articles published in the Journal of The Arms and Armour Society remain the definitive text on the subject. guy wilson, ma, fsa, frsa, worked in the Royal Armouries, the British national museum of arms and armour, from 1972 until 2002, serving as Master of the Armouries from 1988 until 2002. Since retiring, he has established a creative consultancy and co-founded a design company. He is currently involved in research, writing, museum planning, display design and audio and film projects. He has published widely on the subjects of arms and armour and museology. Chairman of the International Committee of Museums and Collections of Arms and Military History (ICOMAM) and its predecessor, IAMAM, since 2002, he has been an Honorary Member of the American Society of Arms Collectors since 1998. stephen wood, ma, fsa, is an independent consultant with thirty years’ experience as a curator in British national military museums; he was Keeper of the National War Museum of Scotland 1983–2000. Author of several books and numerous articles on military history, arms and armour and military museums, he contributed fifty-three entries to The Oxford Companion to Military History (Oxford, 2001). He was created a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government in 1994 in recognition of his book The Auld Alliance: France and Scotland, the military connection (Edinburgh, 1989). He has been an Honorary Member of the American Society of Arms Collectors since 1991.
Introduction Welcome to this, our ninth catalogue. When we produced our first catalogue in 1995 I never dreamed that we would publish a further eight in the following fifteen years. It is not an easy task to assemble so many important pieces each time, particularly those that are in exceptional condition and fresh to the market – but that is always our aim. We shall be exhibiting most of items in this catalogue in New York City at The Winter Antiques Show and then in Palm Beach shortly afterwards. In March we will exhibit at Maastricht at The European Fine Art Fair. The dates of all the antique shows at which we exhibit are regularly updated on our website and we are always happy to send complimentary tickets to our established clients. For anyone unable to visit our stand at one of the shows, please do visit our website which is now being managed and updated much more actively. I would like to take this opportunity to advise against buying on the internet unless from a reputable source. We peruse numerous auctions and the sites of many dealers both amateur and professional, unfortunately there are many, many items that are either optimistically or incorrectly described. Caveat emptor – Let the buyer beware! As many of you will know, we opened our London shop some years ago in Duke Street, St James’s, just off Piccadilly. It is being run by our sons Redmond and Roland. They are always happy to welcome visitors there and will make every effort to accommodate their schedules. If your time is tight, give them a call and they will make an arrangement to suit you. I would like respectfully to dedicate this catalogue to Dr Claude Blair: we shall miss not just his expertise and prodigious powers of recall, but also his humour and sense of fun. Our cataloguers this year need little introduction and I am most grateful to all of them for their scholarly entries. Many others have contributed their time and effort, including Silke Ackermann, Doug Eberhart, Jeffrey Forgeng, Ron Gabel, Robert Held, Herbert G. Houze, Stuart Ivinson, James D. Lavin, Mark Murray-Flutter, Angus Patterson, Stuart Pyhrr, David Thomson, Dr Paula Turner, Ann Wagner, David Wilson and Larry Wilson. Especial thanks are due to Chris Challis, who once again has spent many long hours taking photographs of armour that glints, swords which refuse to remain where placed, cannon which are extremely difficult to manoeuvre and pistols which refuse to stay in focus. All our catalogues are a testimony to both his skill and patience. Particular thanks go to Nickki Eden, who manages our database and is in charge of catalogue distribution. I hope that you enjoy this catalogue – there are many exceptional pieces, each one unique, and I feel that this collection of items, which represents thousands of miles of travelling and many hours of negotiating, often with extremely reluctant vendors, ensures that this is one of the very best catalogues that we have ever produced. As always if we can help in any way with the formation or development of a collection, its conservation, maintenance or display, please do let us know. We have wide experience gained over many years of working in the field of antique arms and armour and are more than happy to share it with you. peter finer
Our Terms of Business Every item in this catalogue is for sale. All sales are made on a first come, first served, basis. We will not reserve any item, but will send further photographs on request if required. All the items described in this catalogue are guaranteed to be genuine antiques and of the period stated. US and Canadian callers should note that when using our 1 800 270 7951 number they will be answered by a 24-hour telephone answering/fax machine. Please send a fax or leave a message and we will respond as soon as possible. Alternatively you can contact us by email: gallery@peterfiner.com. We are always interested in purchasing single items or complete collections of antique guns, pistols, swords, armour and cannon, or taking goods on consignment. Our terms for selling are half those charged by the leading auction houses. OUR BANKERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM Adam & Company 22 King Street, London SW1Y 6QY Account Name: Peter Finer Sort Code: 83–91–36 Account Number: 14492400 IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA J.P. Morgan Chase 270, Park Avenue, 41st floor New York NY 10017 USA Account Name: Peter Finer Account Number: 817710007 A.B.A. / Routing Number: 021000021 Swift: CHASUS33 WE ACCEPT ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS © Peter Finer MMX Editor: Paula Turner Photography: Christopher Challis Design: David Bonser Printed and Bound in England at the De Montfort Press by De Montfort International Printers Ltd.
Table of Contents
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A Highly Rare and Important Italian Basinet, circa 1400 Formed of one piece with a high pointed crown encircled at the level of the brow by fourteen holes for lining rivets, and extending downwards to just above the level of the shoulders, its rear shaped to the nape and turned outwards over the neck to form a short ‘tail’, and its front cut with an arched face-opening that narrows towards its lower end. Height 12⅝ in Width 8¼ in Weight 4 lb 13½ oz For the lover of early armour, the appeal of the medieval basinet lies not only in its exceptional rarity but in the elegance of its form. The deep drawing of such a helmet from a single piece of metal clearly required much skill. It was not until the fourteenth century, however, that that skill could for the first time be widely developed. Before then iron and steel could only be produced in small quantities. Mail was therefore the most common defence of the earlier Middle Ages and any helmets and body armour that accompanied it tended to be formed of several small plates that had to be riveted to one another or to a connecting fabric. With the introduction of improved production techniques in the fourteenth century, however, larger plates became available to the armourer, allowing him to make more readily one-piece helmets like ours and even, eventually, full plate armour. The basinet had its origins in the small, hemi spherical skull cap or cervellière of the thirteenth century, typically worn under the coif or hood of mail of that period. In the following century, however, it evolved into a slightly more substantial, independent defence, having an increasingly tall, conical crown of the kind seen in our example. Two main lines of development were followed by the basinet of the fourteenth century. In the first, it acquired a movable visor and an aventail of mail that respectively protected the wearer’s face and neck, while in the second it lacked both of these features but had its lower edge 16
extended downwards, almost to the shoulders, to compensate for the lack of the aventail. Our basinet is a rare surviving example of the second type, popular with the infantryman of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries because of the superior visibility and ventilation that it afforded its wearer. A silver altarpiece in Pistoia Cathedral, completed by Francesco di Niccolò and Lionardo di Ser Giovanni of Florence in 1376, a fresco in the Basilica di S. Antonio, Padua, produced by Altichieri da Zevio about 1376–9, and a further fresco in the Oratorio di S. Giorgio, Padua, produced by the same artist about 1379–84, provide early evidence of the use of this type of helmet. The type is of particular interest to the student of armour in that it was almost certainly from it that the sallet of the fifteenth century eventually developed. It may well have been to a basinet of the type under discussion that the term celata, first recorded in an Italian text of 1407, originally referred. By the mid-fifteenth century, however, it was being applied to the type of headpiece called by modern writers a ‘barbuta’ or ‘Venetian sallet’. The latter differed from its predecessor only in having a rounded and medially ridged crown rather than a conical one. See no. 4 in this catalogue. The most closely comparable basinets to ours come from the former armoury of the Venetian garrison at Chalcis on the Aegean island of Euboea which fell to invading Turkish forces
in 1470, and the imperial Ottoman arsenal at Istanbul, where trophies of arms taken as booty from defeated Christian forces were periodically deposited. As recorded more fully in entry no. 4, the Chalcis armour was discovered in 1840 and shortly afterwards taken to Athens where it moved around for a number of years before finally coming to rest in the National Historical Museum, Athens. Around 1919–20, however, many pieces from the collection were sold to Dr Bashford Dean of New York, the best of which eventually passed, in 1929, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Acc. nos 29.158.45 and 42.50.33 in that museum’s collections are of exactly the same form as our helmet. Nos B2 and
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B7 remaining in the museum at Athens are also very similar, although the latter has a faceted crown and a somewhat Y-shaped face-opening, anticipating the fashion seen in later ‘Venetian’ sallets. Two more examples of the kind of basinet under discussion can be recorded in the arsenal at Istanbul, housed since the mid-fifteenth century in the former Christian church of St Irene. Interestingly, a third helmet of this form, preserved alongside them, appears originally to have been fitted with both an aventail and a detachable visor of Klappvisier type, hinging at the brow. Four further helmets of this type, also part of the Chalcis group, are recorded: one each in the National Historical Museum, Athens
(no. B1), in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc. no. 29.158.43), in the Cleveland Museum of Art (acc. no. 23. 1065) and in the Wallace Collection, London (cat. no. A74). It is conceivable, from the character of its preservation, that our helmet might also originally have formed part of the Chalcis hoard. At least thirty-six helmets were lost from the hoard between its discovery in 1840 and its first detailed publication in 1911. Provenance
Private collection, Germany
Literature
Claude Blair, ‘Notes on Armour from Chalcis’, Arms & Armour at the Dorchester, London, 1982, pp. 8–14 Lionello G. Boccia, The Xalkis Funds in Athens and New York, privately distributed by the author at the Ninth Triennial Congress of the International Association of Museums of Arms and Military History held in Washington in 1981, no pagination Charles J. ffoulkes, ‘On Italian Armour from Chalcis in the Ethnographical Museum at Athens’, Archaeologia, vol. LXII, 1911, pp. 384–5 and pl. LII Carl Otto von Kienbusch and Stephen V. Grancsay, The Bashford Dean Collection of Arms and Armor in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Portland, Maine, 1933, p. 115 and pl. III Stuart W. Pyhrr, ‘European Armor from the Imperial Ottoman Arsenal’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 24, 1986, p. 91 and figs 8 and 12
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A Highly Rare and Important Composite South German Stechzeug Armour, circa 1490–5 Comprising ‘ frog-mouthed’ Stechhelm with front plate projecting forward to a ‘ lip’ and fitted at its lower end with a later extension plate attached by screws to the top of the breastplate, low domed crown plate and rear plate, all rigidly riveted to one another, the crown and rear plates pierced with pairs of lace holes for the attachment of a lining, the latter further pierced at each side with heartshaped ventilation holes and a slot for a lining strap, and retaining at its lower end the proximal portion of a hasp to connect it to the backplate; breastplate pierced at its upper end with threaded holes for the attachment of the helm, at its left side with a pair of large lace holes for the attachment of a Stechtartsche, and at its boxed right side with threaded and plain holes for the attachment of a Rasthaken, its upper corners and sides fitted with hasps to connect it to the backplate, its right side with a sturdy lance rest attached by means of screws and studs, and its lower edge with a fishtailed internal abdominal plate originally connected by straps to the tailplate of the backplate, and a short waist lame formed at its upper edge with a truncated central cusp and flanged outwards at its lower edge to receive a fauld of five upward-overlapping lames, the lowest of which is cut over the crotch with a shallow arch separating a pair of tassets each of six upward-overlapping lames; backplate pierced at its upper corners and sides with threaded holes for the attachment of the hasps of the breastplate, over each shoulder with slots forming integral buckles for the reception of the free ends of internal shoulder straps issuing from the breastplate, and at the small of the back with a central vertical slot for the reception of the lower end of the rear hasp of the helm, and fitted within its lower edge with a later flaring tailpiece; pauldrons each formed of eight upward-overlapping lames of which the first two extend inwards over the chest and back, and the remainder only as far as the inside of the arm; large circular left besagew rising to a low conical point at is centre and curving forward very slightly at its upper and lower ends; left vambrace formed of a short gutter-shaped upper cannon, a couter of seven lames and a one-piece manifer boxed at each side of the hand; and a right vambrace formed of a gutter-shaped upper cannon, a couter of five lames and a polder mitten, the inner plate of which is formed at its upper end with a large fan-like wing, and is fitted at its lower end with a separate wristplate; the rear of the helm, the backplate, the pauldrons and the vambraces all decorated with ‘Gothic’ fluting, the waist lame and manifer with incised cabling, the lower edge of the left couter with fretting, and the lames of the fauld and tassets with cusped and bracket-cut upper edges, the upper edge of the waist lame struck with four circles in a lozenge formation, probably representing a serial number, and with five Saxon ownership marks, in one case comprising the arms of the Archmarshalcy of the Holy Roman Empire, in three others, the arms of the Dukes of Saxony, and in the remaining case, both sets of arms impaled. Overall height including plinth 78¼ in Weight 75 lb
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Few types of armour can boast the bold forms and imposing presence of the German Stechzeug of the high ‘Gothic’ era. Costly rarities even in the time of their use, such massively constructed defences survive today only in a relatively small number of collections. Ours is now the only authentic example of its kind known to remain in private hands. The earliest record of our armour dates from the late nineteenth century when it formed part of the collection of the German Vice-Chancellor, Prince Otto zu Stolberg-Werningerode (1837– 96). It was presumably kept by him at his family seat of Schloss Werningerode, lying within the governorate of Magdeburg, to the north of the Harz Mountains. From there it passed into the collection of the printing magnate Georg Jacob Paul von Decker at Schloss Boberstein, near Hirshberg, Silesia. Although already owned by him as early as 1880, the castle is unlikely to have been furnished by him with armour until after he had completed its rebuilding in 1894. It was sold by his heirs in 1922. At some time before that date, however, the armour had found its way into the collections of the nearby Schlesisches Museum, Breslau, Silesia, only to be transferred soon afterwards to the Zeughaus (now the Deutsches Historisches Museum), Berlin. The transfer must have taken place no later than 1921 when its helmet alone was illustrated as a part of the latter’s collections in Germany’s leading historical arms journal. Two photographs, probably dating from the 1930s, show the complete armour mounted in one of the museum’s display cabinets. The museum’s accession numbers are still painted within several of its elements. In 1938 the armour was sold by the Zeughaus, through the agency of the Berlin dealer E. Kahlert and the Lucerne auctioneer Theodore Fischer, to the Swiss brewery magnate Hans von Schulthess (1885–1951) of Schloss Au, near Zurich. The armour is of a kind intended for wear in the Gestech: a distinctively German version of the so-called ‘jousts of peace’ in which two mounted 30
contestants endeavoured to splinter their coroneltipped lances against one another. From the second quarter of the fifteenth century onwards such jousts tended in most parts of Europe to be fought over a dividing tilt or barrier that prevented the contestants from colliding. In Germany, however, the tilt was rarely employed before the early sixteenth century. From about 1480, therefore, participants in the Gestech, accepting that collisions would remain a feature of their sport, took to protecting their legs and the chests of their horses with thickly padded Stechsacken or ‘bumpers’ hung around their horses’ necks. The armours worn by them consequently needed no leg defences. Special armour for use in the Gestech is mentioned as early as 1436 in an inventory of the armoury of the Archduke Friedrich of Tyrol (later Emperor Friedrich II). As in later years, it would presumably have been of heavier make than the contemporary field armour and equipped with a helm of ‘frog-mouthed’ form, having the lower edge of its sight bent forward to produce a protruding ‘lip’. Proper vision for the wearer of such a helm was only possible when he leant forward. On straightening up at the moment of impact, however, the ‘lip’ completely protected his eyes from the splinters of his opponent’s lance, which were a major cause of injury in the lists. The ‘frog-mouthed’ helm achieved its most elegant form in the strongly ‘swept’ German Stechhelm of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. That of our armour, closely resembling one in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich, shows the deep pits and gouges of an opponent’s lance, as also does the besagew that accompanies it. The Gestech enjoyed its heyday in the time of the Emperor Maximilian I (1459–1493–1519), a keen jouster himself, who even as a boy had bragged to his uncle of the number of lances that he had broken in a day. It is unlikely that anyone ever owned more Stechzeuge than did this self-styled ‘last of the knights’. Only a few of them, however, would have been intended for his personal use. The majority were for loan to the participants in his lavishly staged court tournaments, which 31
involved so many different types of contest – each requiring its own specialised forms of armour – that few participants would have had the means to equip themselves for all of them. It is perhaps not altogether surprising therefore that most Stechzeuge remaining today are in, or were originally from, groups rather than surviving as single armours. Making up the biggest group of such armours are the fifteen more or less complete examples preserved in the Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer, Vienna, ten of which belonged to the Emperor Maximilian I. Five of them, thought to have been made for the Emperor’s marriage to Bianca Maria Sforza of Milan in 1494, bear the marks of the brothers Lorenz and Jörg Helmschmied of Augsburg, while another three, dating from a similar or slightly later period, bear the mark of Konrad Poler of Nuremberg. Alongside them are preserved three further Stechzeuge thought to have been made, in part at least, for the marriage of the Archduke Sigmund of Tyrol to Katharina von Sachsen in 1484. These bear the marks of the Innsbruck armourers Klaus Wagner, Kaspar Rieder and Christian Schreiner the Elder. As a result of looting by Napoleonic troops in 1805, 1806 and 1809, four further Stechzeuge from the imperial collections in Vienna are now to be seen 32
in the Museé de l’Armée, Paris, while another was transferred to the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest in 1932. A helm and cuirass from the Helmschmied series passed via the collection of William Randolph Hearst to the Philadelphia Museum of Art The largest group of Stechzeuge surviving outside the imperial collections are the seven now in the Germanisches National Museum, Nuremberg, made for use in the Gesellenstechen or ‘bachelor jousts’ held in Nuremberg from 1446 to 1561. The earliest of them, dating from the late 1490s, are possibly the work of the Nuremberg armourer Conrad Poler. By the late 1530s, however, their condition had deteriorated to the point where another Nuremberg armourer, Valentin Siebenburger, had to be engaged not only to complete those that remained, but to add to them at least three new armours. Several of Maximilian’s Stechzeuge in Vienna also show signs of working-life replacements and alterations. It is perhaps inevitable that any series of armours remaining in use over a prolonged period would in due course become muddled and required some replacement of their lost or damaged components. As a result, all Stechzeuge surviving today are to some degree or another composite.
The several ownership marks struck on the waist lame of our example show that that element at least must have resided for a while in a Saxon royal arsenal or armoury. Similar marks are recorded on two late sixteenth-century armours preserved in the Saxon royal arsenal of Schwarzburg. In general, however, our armour finds its closest comparable examples in the Stechzeuge thought to have been made for the Emperor Maximilian’s wedding celebrations of 1494. Its left upper cannon, for example, is decorated with ‘wolf ’s-tooth’ ornament similar to that occurring on two of the latter, respectively bearing the marks of the brothers Lorenz and Jörg Helmschmied (Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer, Vienna, inv. nos S. xii and xiii). In addition, the fretting at the lower edge of the left couter can be compared with that of two further armours of the series by Jörg (inv. nos S. xi and xv), while the scalloping of the lower edge of the right one is of a kind found on three more, variously marked either by himself or by his older brother Lorenz (inv. nos S. xi, xii and xv). The fluted decoration of the backplate and vambraces, moreover, resembles at certain points not only that of the Helmschmied Stechzeuge, but also that of three similar armours bearing marks attributed to the Nuremberg armourer Konrad Poler (inv. nos. S. xvii, xviii and xix). The resemblance of our armour to the latter’s work is particularly great in regard to its breastplate, backplate and lance rest. Of the three Stechzeuge by Poler now remaining in Vienna, two are sufficiently similar in style to the Helmschmied armours of 1494 as to suggest that they were made in the same period as them. It is in any event likely that our armour is composed in the main of elements of the once extensive series of Stechzeuge commissioned by the Emperor Maximilian I for use in the jousts held by him to celebrate his marriage to his second wife, Bianca Maria Sforza of Milan, in 1494. The makers of those armours, Lorenz and
Jörg Helmschmied of Augsburg (c. 1445–1515/16 and after 1445–1502 respectively), and perhaps also Konrad Poler of Nuremberg (recorded in the emperor’s employ in the period 1492–1500), were inevitably among the most distinguished armourers of their day. The emperor would never have settled for any less than the best. Maximilian knew that in Lorenz Helmschmied, generally regarded as the most gifted armourer that ever lived, he had a craftsman of unsurpassed talent; his superlative products are as prized by the collector of today as they were by their original princely owners. Provenance:
Prince Otto zu Stolberg-Werningerode Georg Jacob Paul von Decker Schlesisches Museum, Breslau Zeughaus Museum, Berlin Hans von Schulthess, Schloss Au, near Zurich, Switzerland
Exhibited:
Musée Rath, Geneva, 1972
Literature:
Anon., ‘Meisterwerke der Waffenschmied Kunst’, Zeitschrift für Historische Waffen- und Kostümkunde, vol. IX, 1921, pp. 30–1 C. Blair, European Armour, London, 1958, pp. 157–62, figs 56, 89 C. Bosson, R. Géroudet and E. Heer, Arms Anciennes des Collections Suisses, Musée Rath, Geneva, 1972, cat. no. 4, pp. 12, 114 W. J. Karcheski Jr, ‘The Nuremburg Stechzeuge Armours’, Journal of the Arms and Armour Society, vol. XIV, no. 4, September, 1993, pp. 181–217 L. Seelig, ‘Waffen’ in R. Eikelmann and I. Bauer (eds), Das Bayerische Nationalmuseum 1855–2005 – 150 Jahre Sammeln, Forschen, Austellen, Munich, 2005, p. 422 B. Thomas, ‘Jörg Helmschmied d. J. – Plattner Maximilians I. In Augsburg und Wien’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, vol. 52, 1956, pp. 33–50 B. Thomas, and O. Gamber, Katalog der Leibrüstkammer, vol. I, Vienna, 1976, pp. 137–60, pls 68–73
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A Fine, Important and Extremely Long North German Wheellock Pistol, Brunswick, circa 1555 Formed of a long, slightly swamped three-stage barrel, octagonal at the breach and muzzle with a rounded section between them, finely damascened overall with running foliage, flowerheads and pellets in gold and silver on a blued ground; flat lock with bevelled wheel cover, slightly angled dog, enclosed dog spring, push-button pan cover release and pivoted safety catch, decorated en suite with the barrel; walnut full stock with faceted fishtail butt profusely inlaid with engraved horn plaques depicting the Virgin and St John the Apostle attending Christ on the cross, winged horses, scenes of the chase, scrolling foliage and flowerheads between segmental bands, overlain at the rear with an engraved horn plaque representing a kneeling knight and his horse receiving the Holy Spirit, fitted with short belt hook of iron and restored trigger guard, decorated en suite with the barrel and lock, with restored trigger and a horn-tipped wooden ramrod. Overall length 36⅝ in Barrel length 27¾ in Samuel Kriechel, writing of his visit to Brunswick in 1585, noted that ‘In the said city many arms and armours are made’. With its ready access to the rich mineral deposits of the nearby Harz Mountains, the city of Brunswick, seat of the ancient family of Welf, had long been an important centre for metalworking. In the reigns of Heinrich I (1514–68) and Julius (1568–89), successive Dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, a number of its smiths, along with those of the neighbouring town of Goslar, successfully turned their hands to the then rapidly emerging craft of gunmaking. The presence of their products in some of the greatest princely armouries of Europe affords some evidence of the high esteem in which they must then have been held. Our pistol closely resembles in both form and detail three, all of about 1555, formerly preserved in the Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer, Vienna (inv. nos. A596, A599 and A600). The longest of them, which includes in the damascened decoration of its iron-overlaid stock the arms of the Archduke Maximilian II, is struck on its barrel with a mark attributed to the Goslar gunmaker Hans Schutte, recorded 1556–90. A further pistol of the 36
Archduke (inv. no. A1014), once again having an iron-overlaid stock, but decorated in this instance with etching by the master GS, still remains in the Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer, along with four others of the Archduke Ferdinand II, having silver-overlaid stocks (inv. nos A438, A 439, A439a and A527). The first three of them were the gift of Heinrich, Burggraf zu Meissen, whose arms and initials occur on one, together with the date 1555. Marks attributed to the Goslar gunmaker Hans Schoman, recorded 1556, and the Brunswick goldsmith and embosser Hans Lampe, recorded 1550–68, are respectively to be found on its barrel and stock. These pistols form a close-knit group. All, like ours, have faceted fishtail butts, flat lockplates with truncated front ends, flat, bevelled wheel covers, and pans filled at their outer ends with decorative ogees. Most also have internal dog springs and simple, rod-like pan cover releases, while a few, like ours, have their locks retained by screws that pass through them from their outside to engage threaded holes in belt hooks opposite them. Inv. nos A596, A599 and A600, moreover, show exactly the same style of damascened decoration
as our pistol. Decoration of this kind also occurs on three other mid-sixteenth-century Brunswick school firearms preserved in the Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer, Vienna: a pistol of the Archduke Maximilian II (inv. no. A560) with a carved wooden stock, a carbine of the same prince (inv. no. D71) with an ivory-overlaid stock bearing heraldry dating it to the period 1549–56, and a pistol of the Archduke Ferdinand II (inv. no. A525) with a monkey’s-head pommel of silver. Outside the imperial collections, such decoration can be recorded on a pair of pistols of about 1560 in the Wallace Collection, London (cat. nos A1136 and 1137), possessing bone-inlaid butts with ball butts, and on a single pistol in the Historisches Museum, Dresden (inv. no. 441), dated 1557 on its lock, and bearing the maker’s initials es and the royal arms of Denmark on its staghorn-overlaid stock. The decorator of this superlative series of weapons was clearly an outstanding master of his craft. He may perhaps have been the Brunswick damascener Reinerd Kreker, recorded 1553/4– 1580. The damasceners of Brunswick never belonged to any guild. The city’s goldsmiths not only refused to admit them to their ranks, but actively endeavoured to suppress their activities. In 1572 they brought a complaint against the damascener Klawes Schwante, asserting that he ‘personally made and inlaid bad gold and
silver work in gunlocks, flasks and barrels and similar instruments’; even with their powers, they could not prevent this. When, three years later, Schwante decided to leave the city, he was described by its council as a ‘damascener and luxury gunmaker who inlaid with silver’. In 1560 Reinerd Kreker, the earliest of the Brunswick damasceners, sought the permission of the council to practise his trade independently of the goldsmiths, observing that ‘in no other city in the Empire are statelier arms made than here’. The exceptional quality of our pistol provides strong support for his claim. Provenance
The Princes of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt Fréderick Spitzer William Goodwin Renwick Private Collection, Australia
Exhibited
City Art Museum, St Louis, Missouri, USA, 1939
Literature
Franz Fuhse, Schmiede und verwandte Gewerke in der Stadt Braunschweig, Leipzig, 1930, pp. 50–1 Ortwin Gamber and Christian Beaufort, Katalogue der Leibrüstkammer, II Teil, Busto Arsizio, 1990, pp. 150, 167–70, 173–5, pls 92–3 and 95 Wolfgang Glage, Das Kunsthandwerk der Büchsenmacher im Land Braunschweig, Brunswick, 1983, pp. 31–59
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A Fine Etched and Gilt German Parade Burgonet, probably Augsburg, circa 1585 Formed in one piece with a rounded crown rising to a high roped medial comb, and projecting forwards and backwards respectively to an upturned pointed peak and matching neck guard connected to one another at each side by a narrow slightly down-turned brim with a downward deflection behind each ear, the crown pierced to either side of the nape with a pair of rivet holes for the attachment of a plume holder and encircled at its base with seventeen of an original eighteen lining rivets of brass, the lower edge of the helmet formed with a roped inward turn accompanied by a further twenty-eight such rivets, and its comb, lower border and three slightly divergent vertical bands on each side of its crown etched and gilt on a blackened ground with interlacing foliate scrolls inhabited by winged herms and cherubs’ heads, and involving in an oval cartouche at the left and right sides of the comb respectively, representations of Hercules fighting Achelous transformed into a serpent, and Poseidon, in recumbent pose, holding a trident. Overall height 12 in Width 9½ in Weight 4 lb The spectacular parades that were such a feature of court ceremonial in Renaissance Europe can be seen as a conscious attempt to emulate as far as possible the triumphal processions of ancient Rome. The burgonet, with its obvious resemblance to the Roman ‘jockey-cap’ helmet was always going to be a popular choice for wear in those events. Particularly popular were the one-piece examples, like ours, that offered the decorator an uninterrupted surface for his ornament. The fashion for such helmets seems to have originated in Italy. A splendidly embossed and damascened example made by the brothers Filippo and Francesco Negroli of Milan for the Emperor Charles V, and now in the Real Armería, Madrid (cat. no. D 30), is dated 1545. More closely resembling our burgonet in form, however, is a Brescian group that include in their overall etched, gilt and blued decoration the arms and portrait busts of Pope Julius III. These were presumably made for his guard at some time between 1550 when he took office and 1555 when he died. Examples of the group can be recorded in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 52
(acc. no. 04.3.222), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (acc. no. 1977.167.113), the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (acc. no. M.178–1921), and the Collezione Odescalchi, Rome (inv. no. 325). Of slightly later date than those is a burgonet in the Schlossmuseum, Linz, which includes in its fine etched and gilt ornament representations of Jupiter and Ganymede on the one side, and of Mars, evidently inspired by the engraved designs of Etienne Delaune, on the other. Parade burgonets of this elegant fashion were being made in Germany from almost the same period as they were in Italy. An elaborately embossed and damascened example in the Real Armería, Madrid (cat. no. A 239), forming part of an armour made by the Augsburg armourer Desiderius Helmschmied and the Augsburg goldsmith Jörg Sigman for Philip II of Spain, bears the dates 1549 and 1550. Probably dating from the slightly later period of about 1555–60 is a burgonet in the Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer, Vienna (inv. no. A 444) which has overall etched and gilt decoration picked out at points with red paint. A plain example of the type in the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds (inv. no. iv.417),
bears the mark of the Innsbruck armourer Hans Hörburger (recorded 1556–86). Although dated by some to about 1565, it may well be later. The closest comparable examples to our helmet are a series of three matching burgonets preserved respectively in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. no. 1977.167.112), the Art Institute of Chicago (acc. no. 1982.2227) and the Higgins Armory Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts (acc. no. 1191), the last two of which bear the date 1585. All are finely etched and gilt on a blackened ground with band of trophies including, in cartouches at either side of the comb, representations of Leda and the Swan, and of Jupiter in the guise of a satyr ravishing Antiope in the presence of Cupid. This decoration, although clearly German in its execution, must have received its inspiration from a north Italian example, such as that of about 1570–80 in the Wallace Collection, London (cat. no. A124), which is etched and gilt not only with bands of trophies but also with the same two classical subjects. Nevertheless, whereas the trophies of the Italian example are indifferently executed in the so-called ‘Pisan’ fashion, those of the group discussed above are executed in the altogether finer Augsburg manner.
Our burgonet, although decorated in the bands of its crown with foliate interlace rather than with trophies and in the cartouches of its comb with representations of Hercules and Poseidon, rather than the subjects just discussed, is sufficiently close in style to the Philadelphia, Chicago and Worcester helmets as to suggest that it, like them, was made about 1585 in the celebrated south German armour-producing city of Augsburg. It appears in any event to be the only example of its kind now remaining in private hands. Provenance
Stephen V. Grancsay Private collection, USA
Exhibited
Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1933
Literature
Stephen V. Grancsay, Loan Exhibition of European Arms and Armor, Brooklyn, 1933, cat. no. 38 C. O. von Kienbusch, The Kretzchmar von Kienbusch Collection of Armor and Arms, Princeton NJ, 1963, cat. no. 94, pp. 73–4, pl. XLIX Walter J. Karcheski Jr, Arms and Armor in the Art Institute of Chicago, Boston, New York, Toronto and London, 1995, p. 70
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A Fine and Rare German Silver-mounted Saxon Estoc, Dresden, circa 1580–90 With hilt of blued iron comprising faceted pear-shaped pommel surmounted by moulded tang button and silver cap etched in panels with foliate scrolls, long straight medially ridged quillons flaring to their cusped ends, fitted at their outside with an open medially ridged side ring, and at their underside with a pair of semicircular arms of circular section linked at their lower ends by a smaller side ring en suite with the upper one but enclosing a flat plate, and three inner loop-guards diverging from the root of the forward quillon to lower ends of each arm and the mid-point of the rear arm respectively, wooden grip widening slightly to its lower end and bound with alternating plain and twisted silver wires enclosed between silver ferrules decorated at their free edges with repeated acanthus leaves, and broad uniformly tapering blade of sturdy lozenge-shaped section, its ricasso sheathed with silver etched on its outer face with foliate scrolls, and on its inner face with a saltire, and supporting at its lower end a silver rain guard engraved with the serial number 9. Overall length 44¾ in Blade length 39¼ in Provenance
Armoury of the Electors of Saxony, Dresden Historisches Museum, Dresden American Art Association, New York, 24 November 1928, lot 278 Stephen V. Grancsay, New York Private collection, USA
Exhibited
Loan Exhibition of Arms and Armor, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1931, cat. no. 172 Arms and Armor, Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pa., 1964, cat. no. 107 Exhibition of Arms & Armour and Associated Works of Art, Howard Ricketts Ltd, London, 1973, cat. no. 10
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An Exceptionally Fine and Rare German Silver-mounted Saxon Estoc, Dresden, circa 1590–1600 With hilt of blued iron comprising hollow-faceted fig-shaped pommel with waisted neck, tang button and silver cap etched in alternating panels with symmetrical and asymmetrical foliate scrolls, knuckle guard, long rear quillon swelling to its downward and outward-turned terminal, the latter faceted and capped en suite with the pommel, the quillon block supporting an open side ring and a pair of semicircular arms linked at their lower end by a smaller side ring enclosing a silver plate cut with interlacing strapwork etched with foliate scrolls, and three inner loop-guards diverging from the lower end of the knuckle guard to the lower ends of each arm and the mid-point of the rear one respectively, the spaces between them filled with silver plates fretted and etched en suite with that of the lower side ring, wooden grip widening slightly to its lower end and bound with twisted iron wire enclosed between Turks’ heads of the same, and broad uniformly tapering blade of sturdy lozenge-shaped section, its ricasso grooved at each side. Overall length 43 in Blade length 37⅜ in Provenance
Armoury of the Electors of Saxony, Dresden John F. Hayward, Sotheby’s, London, 1 November 1983, lot 15 Private collection, USA
Exhibited
The Art of the Armourer, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1963, no. 98
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A Fine German Swept-hilt Rapier with Silver-encrusted Hilt, circa 1610 With hilt of iron formed of a vertically grooved spherical pommel with waisted neck and small tang button, and guards of circular section comprising knuckle guard, long straight quillons supporting a pair of semicircular arms linked at their lower ends by an oval side ring enclosing a flat plate, two diagonal outer loop guards respectively linking the lower end of the knuckle guard to the root of the rear quillon and the root of the forward quillon to the lower end of the rear arm, and three inner loop guards diverging from the lower end of the knuckle guard to the lower ends of the arms, the quillons and the upper end of the knuckle guard each terminating in spherical finials, and the outer loop guards and side ring each interrupted at their centres by spherical mouldings between a pair of constricted mouldings, all except the inner loop guards and the inner faces of the arms richly decorated overall on a blued ground with silver-encrusted foliate scrolls and flowerheads inhabited at points by winged cherubs’ heads, grip of wood carved with a repeated chevron-pattern and bound with fine twisted silver wire between Turks’ heads, and long slender blade of hexagonal section formed at each side of the ricasso with a single broad fuller, and at each side of the forte with a pair of narrow fullers respectively struck with the inscriptions inte + domine and spe + ravit accompanied by an orb and cross on one side, and nonconfodat and ineternvn on the other. Overall length 47⅜ in Blade length 41⅜ in The swept-hilt rapier is not only one of the most elegant forms of sword ever devised, but also one of the most interesting. At the height of its popularity in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, considerable variation could be found in the number and arrangement of the several guards that made up its hilt. Two features in particular serve to characterise the hilt of our rapier: the first is its possession of a forward quillon as well as a rear one, and the second, its possession of two diagonal outer loop guards respectively linking the lower end of the knuckle guard to the proximal end of the rear quillon and the proximal end of the front quillon to the lower end of the rear arm. A portrait of David Joris, probably by Jan van Sorrel, in the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basle (inv. no. 561), shows this combination of features to have existed as early as about 1540–5. The form of inner guard seen on the hilt of our rapier, however, is unknown before its appearance in Sir Martin Frobisher’s portrait of 1577 by Cornelis Ketel, in 80
the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Closely resembling that of our example, except in having chiselled rather than encrusted ornament, are the hilts of two rapiers respectively preserved in the Musée de l’Armée, Paris (inv. no. PO 2024), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc. no. 14.25.1190). They have not only spherical pommels, but also spherical mouldings decorating their guards. Of perhaps greater relevance to our example, because of their possession of silver-encrusted ornament, are the hilts of three further rapiers of the pattern under discussion: one in the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin (inv. no. W 602), and two in the Wallace Collection, London (cat. nos 583 and 583). Another, in the Collezione Odescalchi, Rome (inv. no. 335), is of interest in showing details generally associated with English swords of the early seventeenth century. Silver-encrusted decoration involving winged cherubs’ heads of the kind found on the hilt of our rapier is in fact a relatively common feature
of high-quality English swords of the early seventeenth century, believed in some cases to have been made by the royal sword cutlers Thomas Cheshire, Nathaniel Mathew and Robert South of London. A royal warrant of 1614, for instance, authorised a payment to the second of those makers for, among other things, a sword decorated with ‘cherubyn heads de argento damasked’. Such decoration was nevertheless popular throughout much of northern Europe. It is found for example on the hilt of a German rapier of about 1610 in the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds (inv. no. ix.877), as well as on another of the same date and origin in the Collezione Odescalchi, Rome (inv. no. 415). This latter, aside from the fact that it lacks outer loop guards, is constructionally similar to that of ours. It even has a large vertically grooved pommel. Two further silver-encrusted swords possessing pommels of this type can be seen in the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum, Zurich (inv. nos LM 16736 and 16988). The first belonged to Hans Gugelberg von Moos (recorded 1562–1618), and the second to Rudolf von Schauenstein (recorded 1587–1626), whose name appears on its blade along with the date 1614. A third resembling them is in the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds (inv. no. ix.1033). It seems probable from the foregoing that our rapier, like the pieces just discussed, was made in Germany. That would almost certainly be true for its blade which bears the mark of an orb and cross, commonly found on the works of the sword cutlers of the north Rhine-Westphalian city of Solingen, then Europe’s leading producers of sword blades. Their Latin, however, seems not to have matched their metalworking skills. The inscriptions can be seen as a somewhat garbled version of the last two lines of the Te Deum: In te, Domine, speravi non confundar in aeternum In you, Lord, I have hoped may I never be put to shame – sentiments to which the owner of any sword would have done well to subscribe. Provenance
Private collection, USA
Literature
A. R. Dufty and A. N. Borg, European Swords and Daggers in the Tower of London, London, 1974, pls 13c, 26d Heinrich Müller and Hartmut Kölling, Europäische Hieb- und Stichwaffen aus der Sammlungen des Museums für Deutsche Geschichte, Berlin, 1981, pp. 208, 213 and 377 A. V. B. Norman, The Rapier and the Small-Sword 1460–1820, London, 1980, pp. 146–9, pls 31, 47 Hugo Schneider and Karl Stüber, Waffen im Schweizerishen Landesmuseum: Griffwaffen, Zurich, 1980, pp. 154–5
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A Fine and Exceptionally Rare Pair of Scottish Brass-stocked Snaphaunce Pistols by the Master ‘AG’, dated 1622 Each with sighted, slightly tapering round barrels of brass each formed with moulded decoration at the muzzle and three raised bands at the breach, the upper surface finely engraved with symmetrical foliate scrolls and rosettes enclosed within interlacing ribbons, and incised at the rear with the date 1622, snaphaunce locks respectively of left-hand and right-hand form, each having a long flat bevelled lockplate of brass with shaped terminals, its surface engraved with foliate scroll and stuck with the maker’s initials ag, flat combed cock, flat buffer, flat arm of the steel and vertically ridged fence, all decorated with pairs of incised lines, full stocks of brass with slender fishtailed butts, finely engraved at each side of the latter with foliate scrolls separated by diagonal bands, and elsewhere with a key pattern separated by similar bands, each fitted opposite its lock with a replaced belt hook of iron, and on its underside with a slender iron ramrod and unguarded iron baluster-shaped trigger. Overall length 16¾ in Barrel length 11⅝ in As a result of the various Acts of Disarming passed by the British Parliament in the wake of the unsuccessful Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745, early Scottish pistols like ours are now of the greatest rarity. Most that do survive are to be found in the princely armouries of continental Europe where they were presumably deposited as diplomatic gifts. While they clearly stand apart in character from the contemporary products of continental Europe, they are not in fact so very different from those then being produced south of the border. The fishtailed butts, the snaphaunce locks, the belt hooks, the unguarded baluster trigger and the moulded muzzles of our pistols are all features that could also then have been seen on English products. In two respects, however, they differ from the latter: in having all-metal stocks and in having lefthand and right-hand locks. The second of these features, at least, had come into existence at some time before the end of the sixteenth century. Scottish gunmaking probably had its origins in the reign of James IV (1473–1488–1513) who, following the purchase of his first culverin in
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January 1508, developed a passion for shooting. In 1510 the Dutch culverin maker George Keppin was installed by him in a workshop in Edinburgh Castle where he remained working into the third year of the succeeding reign of James V (1513–42). The latter, although only a baby at that time, must in due course have taken to his father’s sport. In 1533 he had to pay compensation to the owner of a cow that he had accidentally shot while hunting. Despite the introduction of several acts seeking to limit the private ownership and use of hand firearms in Scotland, the decades that followed saw a gradual increase in the number of native craftsmen engaged in their manufacture. By the end of the sixteenth century the standing of the Scottish gun trade had risen to the point where its products were even on occasion exported to England and the Continent. Although Scottish firearms have traditionally come to be associated with the Highlander, their principal centres of manufacture were in fact to be found in the Lowlands: initially Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee where incorporations of hammermen had long been established.
In the Historisches Museum, Dresden, is a pair of pistols (inv. nos J1431–2) bearing the date 1598, and the mark ik, possibly of John Kello or John Kennedy of Edinburgh. They, and a possibly even earlier pair of restocked pistols in the Real Armería, Madrid (inv. no. K215–6), bearing the mark ia, possibly of either James or John Alison of Dundee, are already very like ours in all details, except that that their stocks are made of plain wood rather than brass. By the early seventeenth century, such stocks had acquired butt caps of gilt brass, as seen, for example, on a pair of pistols in the Tøjhusmuseet, Copenhagen (inv. no. B345.1–2), bearing the date 1602 and the mark il, probably of James Low of Dundee, and a left-hand pistol in the Royal Armouries, Leeds (inv. no. xii.737), bearing the date 1619 and the mark ca. From the second decade of the seventeenth century, such fish-tailed pistols began to be made with all-metal stocks: usually of gilt brass, but just occasionally of iron, as in the case of one formerly in the museum at Göttenborg, Sweden, which bears the date 1616 and the mark ig, possibly of James Gray of Dundee. The earliest of the type with brass stocks are a pair from the armoury of King Louis XIII of France, now in the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh (inv. no. LH3256). These bear the date 1611 and also have the il mark. Closely resembling them is a further pair in the Livrustkammaren, Stockholm (inv. no. 15/228) bearing the date 1613 and the mark vb (or js?), a single pistol bearing the same
date and mark in the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh (inv. no. L.1949–90), a single lefthand pistol in the Tøjhusmuseet, Copenhagen (inv. no. B1021), bearing the same date and the il mark, a further single left-hand pistol in the Art Institute of Chicago (acc. no. 1982.2319), dated 1614, and a pair in the Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery, bearing the date 1626 and, once again, the il mark. The close resemblance of our pistols to these last, both in regard to form and decoration, leaves little doubt that their maker, the Master AG, practised or at least learned his trade in the city of Dundee which, until its sacking by the troops of Oliver Cromwell at the end of the Covenanting wars in 1651, appears to have been the pre-eminent centre for the manufacture of presentation-quality firearms in Scotland. Provenance
W. Keith Neal collection Private collection, USA
Literature
Claude Blair, ‘Scottish Firearms’, American Society of Arms Collectors Bulletin, no. 31, Spring 1975, pp. 61–101 Claude Blair and Robert Woosnam-Savage, Scottish Firearms, Bloomfield, Ontario and Alexandria Bay, New York, 1995 Arne Hoff, ‘Scottish Pistols in Scandinavian Collections’, Journal of the Arms & Armour Society, vol. I, no. 12, December 1955, pp. 199–214 W. Keith Neal and D. H. L. Back, Great British Gunmakers 1540–1740, Norwich, 1984, pp. 70–1, pls 6a–c
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A Very Fine Bohemian Combined Candle Lighter and Alarm Clock by Ferdinand Engelsalch, Prague, circa 1730 The gilt-brass box case is supported on four baluster legs each expanding as a wide ‘ bun’ just above the foot, with a domed steel bell attached to the underside. The right side of the top of the case has a gilt-brass twelve-hour clock face set into a plate engraved with foliate scrollwork, the face pierced twice to the left of the dial for winding squares. The upper square, surrounded by a numbered semicircular dial allows the movement to be regulated and indicates the setting, the lower square activates or deactivates the alarm. The main dial has a fixed outer ring for reading the minutes, marked in five-minute intervals from 5 to 60, and an inner ring of Roman numerals for reading the hours marked I to XII. It has a long minute-hand and a short hour-hand with a fretted tail, both are adjusted using the winding key. In the centre of the main dial is a turning dial marked in numerals from 1 to 12. The pin at the rear of the key is used to turn this inner dial to set the alarm time, which is indicated by the tail of the hour hand, the dial advancing with the passage of time so that the alarm time set continues to be indicated. The gilded movement is engraved fer: engelsalchk prag and has a fusee and chain drive with a verge escapement controlled by a sprung balance wheel, the balance cock is pierced and engraved. The left side of the top has a cover, hinged and sprung at the front, and engraved within a strapwork border and inner strapwork surround with the name and address of the maker ferdinand/engelsalchk/prag. Set into a narrow plate running the length of the back is a flintlock. Inside the hinged lid the case is divided into two open compartments, one containing a sprung candle holder operated by an arm running from the alarm train of the clock through the other compartment, which also operates a cam to open the lid. Within this other compartment is a further, covered compartment, perhaps for flints or tinder. When the alarm and action are set and the lock primed and cocked, the lid is held closed by the closed frizzen and the candle holder is held horizontally by a spring with the end of the candle opposite the pan. When the alarm sounds the flintlock is triggered by an indirect, pre-set, sprung mechanism, the hinged cover opened and the candle lit and released to a vertical position through gearing that ensures it has time to be properly lit. Complete with a winding key. Length overall 7 in Depth 37/8 in Height 33/4 in This combined candle lighter and alarm clock is a fine example of the mechanical contrivances which have been so popular in Europe since the Renaissance. Such ingenious marvels often adorned the cabinets of curiosities of men of fashion and learning, but this piece is not just ingenious, it is also supposedly practical. In the days before the invention of the friction phosphorous match by the English chemist John Walker in about 1826, lighters were exceptionally 108
important tools. From the Middles Ages on sparks were produced by striking flint against steel, which in turn ignited tinder – highly combustible, partly scorched linen that could then be used to light a candle or a fire. Special tinder boxes were being made in Europe by the early sixteenth century at the latest and remained a feature of ordinary life for some 300 years. Soon, to meet the demand for novelties and mechanical contrivances, the everyday tinder-lighter box
was developed into a number of decorative and ingenious mechanical forms. Instead of simply using separate pieces of flint and steel, mechanisms combining them were contrived to make flintlock lighters, often made to look like real flintlock pistols. In addition, special lighters combined with inkstands or made especially to light tapers or, as here, candles, were produced. This particular example is of the type combined with an alarm clock that can be set to give a wakeup call and light the bedside candle. In his book Humane Industry, published in London in 1661, Thomas Powell includes an early description of one. He mentions that the Italian jurist Andrea Alciato (1492–1550) ‘had a kind of Clock in his chamber, that should awake him at any hour that he determined, and when it struck the determined hour, it struck fire likewise out of a flint, which fell among tinder, to light him a candle: it was the invention of one Caravagio of Sienna in Italy.’ That there may be some truth in this story and that candle-lighter alarm clocks were known in
the sixteenth century appears to be proved by the existence in the British Museum (no. 1901.0115.1) of a wheellock candle-lighter alarm. Apart from this, surviving examples date from the eighteenth century and include one by Johann Maurer of Berlin, made in about 1730, that was sold by us in 1999. Another Maurer is marked london, but this is probably a spurious address rather than evidence of his having worked in England for a time – Bavarian clockmakers, especially, frequently added such spurious addresses to their work. A similar candle lighter made in Vienna by Joseph Sich (1697–1765) is also recorded and there is another, very similar to it in the British Museum (reg. no. 1897.0802.1) which may also be of Viennese origin. This is beautifully engraved with scenes of cavalry combat. Our example was made in Prague, however its maker, Ferdinand Engelsalchk (sometimes spelled Engelschalck or Engelshalkh), was born in Friedburg in Bavaria in 1680 but is known to have been working in Prague by 1706 when he
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became a citizen, he died in 1755. He came from a large family of clockmakers and another member of the family, also named Ferdinand, worked in Friedberg and Würzburg and died in 1730. Earlier, a Johann Engelsalchk had worked as a clockmaker in Prague in the second half of the seventeenth century but his relationship with the maker of our candle lighter is unknown. Our fine lighter could have been made by Ferdinand at any time after his arrival in Prague until shortly before his death. However, while the evidence of its form is an inconclusive guide to its exact date the overall style of its decoration suggests that it was made no later than about 1730. Provenance Tom Key
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Literature
J. Abeler, Meister der Uhrmacherkunst, Wuppertal, 1977, p. 416 G. H. Baillie, Watchmakers and Clockmakers of the World, Hebden Bridge, 2008, p. 101 Caspall, J. Making Fire and Light in the home pre 1820, Woodbridge, 1987, p. 36 Ralph Fastnedge, English Furniture Styles, Harmondsworth, 1955, p. 58 Peter Finer catalogue, 1999, no. 34 Helena Hayward (ed.) World Furniture: An Illustrated History, London, 1982, pp. 72–91, 100–1 Frederick Kaltenböck, Viennese Timepieces, Vienna 1993, p. 77 Stanislav Michal, Hodinářství a hodináři v českých zemích, Prague, 2002 H. Lee Munson, ‘Flintlock Tinder Lighters’, The Gun Report, May 1987, pp. 44–5 L. Stolberg, ‘Wecker mit Steinschloss pulverdampf und Kerze’, Alte Uhren und Moderne Zeitmessung, April 1989, pp. 9–15 G. M. Wilson, The Vauxhall Operatory: A Century of Inventions before the Scientific Revolution, Leeds, 2010, p. 107 Lewis Winnant, Firearms Curiosa, New York, 1955, p. 235
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A Fine and Rare Pair of Russian Flintlock Holster Pistols, Tula, circa 1765 With slightly tapering sighted barrels, each formed in three stages separated by moulded bands, the rear two finely chiselled in relief and burnished against a matt-gold ground with trophies of arms, scrolling foliage, flower heads and ribbons surrounding the figure of a mounted soldier in contemporary dress raising his sword, flat lock similarly decorated with trophies of arms, captive warriors, grotesque masks and scrolling foliage, full stocks of figured walnut carved in relief around the barrel tangs and in front of the locks with grotesque masks and foliate scrolls. Full mounts of iron comprising long-spurred butt caps, flat sideplates, rounded trigger guards with acanthus terminals, escutcheons and ramrod pipes, all except the last decorated en suite with the barrels and locks, the butt caps additionally decorated in ovals at their rear ends and sides with classical male busts, in the former case helmeted, and the escutcheons additionally decorated in crowned ovals with further such busts, also helmeted, and wooden ramrods tipped with dark horn en suite with the fore-end caps. Overall length 18⅜ in Barrel length 11⅝ in The brilliantly decorated presentation-quality firearms made in Tula in the eighteenth century represent a high point in Russian gunmaking and are clear evidence of a desire on the part of the Russians to produce firearms in the Western European rather than native Russian fashion. Although gunmakers are known to have existed in Russia from as early as the late sixteenth century, it is only from about 1620 onwards that any actual examples of their work survive: in most cases made by craftsmen employed in the workshops of the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow. These were usually fitted with snaphaunce locks of Anglo-Dutch type but decorated in a distinctively Russian manner showing Eastern influence. Such firearms continued to be produced until the end of the seventeenth century. In the following century, however, things were to change. In 1705 Tsar Peter the Great (1672– 1682–1725) founded in the metalworking city of Tula, some 120 miles to the south of Moscow, a State small arms factory. Ever since his return from a tour of Western Europe in 1697, he had been determined to modernise his country. He even ordered his courtiers and officials to adopt 118
Western European fashions. Above all, however, he sought to modernise his nation’s industry. The challenging brief of his Tula factory was to supply the Russian armed forces with all the firearms and swords that they needed: some 8,000 muskets annually in the early eighteenth century, rising to 70,000 a century later. Despite the completion of a new building to accommodate them in 1718, most of the 2,750 or so employees of the factory worked from home, specialising in just a single part of the production process. From at least 1720, however, some of the more gifted of the factory’s craftsmen were encouraged to produce luxury weapons such as ours for the use of the court and for presentation to foreign rulers and dignitaries. These weapons would of course have been expected to follow the Western European fashions favoured by the factory’s founder but initially alien to his indigenous workforce. It may in part have been to remedy this deficiency that foreign gunmakers were brought in to work at Tula. Of the fifteen immigrants named in the factory’s records, most were of German, Swedish and Danish origin, with others, however, possibly coming from the Baltic area.
Curiously, although none seem to have come from France, it was French fashions that dictated the style at Tula. This style, ultimately deriving from the early eighteenth-century pattern books of Nicholas Guérard of Paris, came to Russia in the form of the pirated edition of his designs published by Johann Christoph Weigel of Nuremberg. Yet for all their readiness to adopt these fashions, the Tula gunmakers took little time to modify them to a form that was at once recognisable as their own. Particularly distinctive of their rich style was the brilliant burnish of their metal parts. Interestingly, in the reign of the Empress Catherine the Great (1729–1762– 1796), the Tula factory was put to work producing cut-steel furniture mounts as well as arms. It is clearly no coincidence that it was in that factory that the fashion for cut-steel sword hilts seems to have originated. The fine polishing of steel was very much a feature of its products. As might be expected, the largest group of fine-quality Tula firearms surviving today is that to be found in the former Imperial arms collection in the Kremlin. Numbering some seventy-five signed examples in all, they bear dates ranging from 1720 to 1793. Our pistols, with their flat locks and flat, unpierced sideplates probably date from about 1760–70. Although flat locks of French fashion were occasionally to be found on Tula firearms as early as the 1740s, they only became common after about 1760. That our pistols belonged to a person of high rank is evident not only from the presence of closed crowns above their escutcheons, but also from the
superlative quality of their decoration. Consisting in the main of trophies of arms and captive slaves, the theme of decoration is clearly to be seen as triumph in the battlefield. It has been suggested that the helmeted busts on the escutcheons represent Alexander Nevski, a key figure in medieval Russian history, who rose to legendary status on account of his victory over the German and Swedish invaders in the thirteenth century. Interestingly, the mounted figure with raised sword dominating the decoration of each of the breeches can be identified as a version of the iconic image of Peter the Great triumphing over Charles IX of Sweden in the Battle of Poltova in 1709. Beginning with the paintings of Louis Caravagne in 1718 and Denis Martens the younger in 1726, the image has been repeated many times. One of the closest in date to our pistols is the celebrated mosaic image prepared by Mikhail Lomonosov in 1762–4. The busts on either side of the pommels are further representations of Peter the Great. That his image, as the founder not only of modern Russia but also of the Tula Arms factory, should adorn our superlative pistols could hardly be more appropriate. Provenance
Gustave Diderrich Private collection, USA
Literature
John F. Hayward, The Art of the Gunmaker, vol. II (1660–1830), London, 1963, pp. 177–81, 268–70 Moscow: Oruzcheinaya Palata, Moscow, 1954, ch. I, pls 13–40
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An Important and Rare Pair of French Officer’s Pistol Holsters, circa 1765 In cuir boulli, coloured brown and deeply tooled in reserve on each front with detailed depictions of flowers, including roses, stems and leaves encircling trophies of arms; on one holster the trophy includes a mortar firing a smoking shell, a cannon barrel, two powder barrels, a linstock, a worm, a ladle, a sponge, priming flasks and cannon balls; and, on the other holster, the trophy includes a breastplate, a classical crested helmet, swords, flags and musical instruments. A border of laurel leaves and berries engraved in reserve encircles the holsters’ mouths and the tips are engraved in reserve with encircling acanthus leaves that almost cover the turned ivory finials; the backs plain, polished and fitted with small, plain, polished brass panels bearing loose brass rings for suspension. Overall length 13½ in Width of mouths 5¼ in Our finely made leather holsters were undoubtedly commissioned personally by a French officer of considerable means. They are highly unusual in being decorated with the most exquisite tooling executed ‘in reserve’ in order to create a cameo effect, whereby the design is heightened through the surrounding field being minutely cut away. Indeed every feature is of the highest quality, even extending to the turned ivory finials, that are themselves partly – and deliberately – covered by the finely cut detail of the acanthus-leaf tips of the holsters. Such fine detailing is an example of the aesthetic for which the applied arts of France in the eighteenth century are now widely recognised. It is clear that our holsters were originally the property of a very grand officer indeed. Our holsters, although of inestimably higher quality, are typical of the types of holster used by mounted troops from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. During that period cavalry soldiers of all ranks, as well as senior staff officers, generals, marshals and even heads of state, would have been mounted when on the battlefield and, as part of their personal accoutrements, would have been equipped with a pair of pistols. These holsters, and all others like them, no matter what their quality, were intended to hold a pair of 124
pistols and would have been carried strapped in front of the saddle, flanking the horse’s shoulders. They were intended to be easily removable from the horse so that, if it bolted, the owner of the pistols did not lose them: in the case of an officer such a loss would have involved financial loss; for a trooper it would have brought punishment. While worn on the horse, saddle holsters of all types and for all ranks of soldier were covered, and the holster covers, made of cloth of varying degrees of richness and embroidered or laced with the same attention to cost and status, would have obscured the greater part of the holster itself: the holster covers were often used as a canvas for monograms or regimental insignia. We offered a superb British saddle cloth, or shabracque, a saddle and pair of holsters and covers of circa 1665, all decorated en suite in silk velvet and embroidery, in our catalogue of 1997, item number 35. It would have been for the French equivalent of just such a saddle that our holsters would have been made, perhaps for a general or a marshal of France. The very accurate depiction of artillery equipment on the trophy of one of the holsters suggests strongly that they were made for a général d’artillerie. The iconography revealed by the fine engraving in reserve on our holsters is non-
regimental in type, depicting matériel used by all arms of eighteenth-century armies, but it is clearly identifiable as French. The infantry colour depicted can clearly be seen to be a drapeau d’ordonnance of a French infantry regiment and the cavalry standard is of a type common to most French cavalry regiments: it would have been decorated with the device of the sun-insplendour and the motto nec pluribus impar (not unequal to many, i.e. equal to any), a motto adopted by Louis XIV of France (1639–1643–1715) and retained by his successors on the cavalry standards of their armies. The original owner of our superb holsters would have served in the French army at a time when its officer corps was almost exclusively aristocratic by birth: he would have believed in and sympathised with the French king’s motto and, it might be observed, applied it when commissioning saddle holsters of such unparalleled magnificence. The ornamentation of such masculine items as military holsters with cascades of flowers comes as a direct result of the popularity of such floral decoration in France in the mid-eighteenth century, a fashion that developed naturally from the rococo style and was fanned into almost an obsession in France, encouraged in part, at least, by the work and influence of the artist François Boucher (1703–70). The interest in flower decoration seems to have been a development of rococo naturalism and, although by no means confined to France, reached its peak of popularity in that country. By 1748 the Vincennes porcelain factory was employing forty-five women just to make ceramic flowers and even this number had to be increased as the fashion for them became a craze. Flowers appear in profusion on Vincennes and Sèvres porcelain in the 1750s, were also used commonly on French silver of mid-eighteenth century, and are still found on ceramics made there twenty years later. They are also sometimes found on French silver. Of special relevance to our holsters is a tea and coffee service in the Victoria and Albert Museum (no. 768–1882), London made at Sèvres in about 1760 and 126
decorated in rose Pompadour style by Charles Buteux on which military trophies are partly surrounded by cascades of flowers. Although the flowers are not so profuse or as dominant as on our holsters, this set is very much in the same style. Buteux seems rather to have specialised in such a combination and is known to have worked at Sèvres from 1756 to 1782. The artist Boucher was first employed by the French court in 1735, but his dominant position in French art was sealed by the influence of King Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour (1721–64), who was his enthusiastic patron from the mid 1740s until her death. Boucher exerted enormous influence on French art and fashion which led Europe at this time and in 1765 his eminence was recognised by his appointment as Premier Peintre du Roi (First Painter of the King). His portraits of aristocratic and sensuous young ladies usually show them wearing, holding or surrounded by flowers. In a series of eight paintings (now in the Frick Collection, New York, acc. nos 1916.1.04–11) depicting the arts and sciences, which he painted between 1750 and 1752, Boucher framed all the scenes with garlands of flowers, mostly roses, in a manner very reminiscent of the way garlands surround the trophies on our holsters. There is no doubt that our holsters were decorated to comply with this passion for flower ornament which was the height of fashion in mid-eighteenth-century France. Their owner, when he went to war with them, would have looked elegant and stylishly modern. Provenance
Private collection, France
Literature
Bevis Hillier, Pottery and Porcelain 1700–1914: England, Europe and North America, London, 1968, p. 104 George Savage, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century French Porcelain, Feltham, 1969, pp. 111–17, 138 Rosalind Savill, The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Sèvres Porcelain, vol. III, London, 1988, pp. 1007–9 J. Turner (ed.), The Grove Dictionary of Art, vol. IV, London, 1998, pp. 513, 517
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A Fine French Smallsword with Chiselled and Gilded Hilt, circa 1770–80 The blued steel hilt chiselled overall and enhanced with gilding: both sides of the ovoid pommel, of the centre of the knucklebow, of the ricasso and of the twin shells all decorated with oval panels containing trophies representative of the Arts, Music, Learning and War and the remainder of the hilt decorated with a continuous laurel pattern and with sprays of foliage. The blade of concave triangular section, blued and gilded for approximately one-third of its length, engraved in that section on both sides with a winged figure armed with a buckler and flourishing a sword and, at the forte, with the name and address Kiessmann Mᵈ fourbiʃseur rue des êpronières a Bruxelles. Overall length 38in Blade length 31¾in Our splendid smallsword, with its beautifully chiselled and gilded hilt, is typical of the fashion of court sword worn by gentlemen in France in the 1770s and early ’80s. Examples of this style of French smallsword hilt, in which rich gilding has been selectively and carefully applied to a chiselled blued steel ground in order to produce the resultant decoration, are shown in many scholarly reference books, exist in major museum collections and can be seen in contemporary portraits. The smallsword, as an essential item for wear by a gentleman between around 1690 and 1790 and worn as much to indicate his social status as to defend himself, was as subject to the changes in and vicissitudes of fashion in that period as were a gentleman’s other everyday accoutrements, such as his watch, his walking cane, his shoe and knee buckles and his snuff box. It is not unusual to find these examples of a gentleman’s jewellery en suite, so that his sword hilt matched his snuffbox, his watch case and the top of his cane and all were affected by changes in the style of the day: thus, one finds sword hilts in the baroque style – see item 20 in this catalogue – as well as in the rococo and in the neoclassical style. The hilt of our beautiful sword, almost certainly made in Paris but clearly mounted with a blade made by a cutler with a workshop in a small street in 128
Brussels famous for many centuries as a centre for iron-working (an éperonnier is a maker of spurs), reflects the prevailing fashion in France in the decade before the Revolution of 1789: a type of baroque-classical style that connoisseurs of furniture know by the name of the French monarch of the period, ‘Louis XVI’ – or Louis seize. Its lack of much in the way of neoclassical features, together with its retention of large and developed arms of the hilt, suggest that it can be dated to the 1770s rather than to the period immediately before the French Revolution, an event that would sweep away such fashions and, just as swiftly, replace them with ones of its own. This style of sword hilt, although most usually associated with French hiltmakers, was also executed very well by hiltmakers in Tula, Russia, and in other continental European cities (North, pl. 46; Victoria and Albert Museum 193-1928). However, it appears not to have found favour with British or American hiltmakers, although Francophile British gentlemen able to visit Paris in times of peace between Britain and France, undoubtedly equipped themselves with the latest fashion of Parisian smallsword. Throughout the period that the smallsword was worn by gentlemen, the quality of its hilt was both a measure and a demonstration of the depth
of the owner’s purse and the design of the hilt was deliberately intended to make manifest to knowledgeable observers the owner’s interests, connections and sympathies. Thus, we find smallswords with patriotic hilts, such as item 20 in this catalogue, as well as those whose hilt iconography clearly marks them as the weapons of naval or military officers, composers of music, classical scholars, scientists and writers. By the end of the period, and particularly in Britain, where a growing middle class was providing a ready market for manufactures of all kinds, smallswords are to be found with hilts intended to be worn when in mourning: it is certainly the case that anyone wishing to be regarded as a gentleman would have owned several smallswords and worn whichever was deemed most appropriate to the rest of his dress or the circumstances of the moment. Our fine sword, with its hilt iconography reflecting the arts of both peace and war, would have marked its wearer as a civilised, cultivated, sophisticated gentleman at ease at the court of Louis XVI and in the salons and drawing rooms of pre-Revolution Paris. Its hilt is an exquisite example of the last flowering of French smallsword hilt design and decoration at the end of the long period when such sidearms were worn by gentlemen. Provenance
Sotheby’s, London, 19 April 1920, ‘The Collection of Arms and Armour and Objects of Art of the late Sir Guy Francis Laking, Bart. C.B., M.V.O., F.S.A., &c’, lot 197 Hans von Schulthess, Schloss Au, near Zurich, Switzerland
Literature
J. D. Aylward, The Small-Sword in England, London, 1945 A. V. B. Norman, The Rapier and Small-Sword 1460–1820, London, 1980 A. R. E. North, An Introduction to European Swords, London, 1982
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A Magnificent Russian Oval-barrelled Sporting Gun by G. Kuprin, Tula, circa 1770 Bright steel lock with rounded plate, faceted frizzen and swan-neck cock, the latter with chiselled leaf scroll supports from the heel to the back of the neck and the front of the neck to the lower jaw. The lock encrusted and chiselled with roses in two-colour gold and with a rocaille motif at the rear. The walnut full stock inlaid with profuse silver wire decoration in the form of spiralling scrolls and carved with ribs around the main elements and sprays of flowers on the wrist and at the front end of the pronounced cheek rest. Mounts of bright steel, consisting of three ramrod pipes, a scroll trigger guard, a butt plate and a two-part side plate, with horn fore-end cap. The butt plate shaped to the shoulder with stepped, faceted tang encrusted and chiselled with gold and silver roses and with a large acorn-shaped finial engraved with foliate and floral scrolls on a gilt ground. The side flat edged with a double line and zigzag border in silver wire within which are silver wire scrolls and expanded steel washers for the two side nails chiselled, cut out and gilt in the form of rococo foliate scrolls. The trigger guard decorated en suite with blued steel trigger reinforced behind with a triangular fin. The two-stage oval-bore barrel with ribbed octagonal section chiselled at the breech with rocaille scroll work and ahead of this on the three top flats chiselled and gilt with roses, top flat also bearing the maker’s name in gold г купринь, with stepped tang decorated en suite, raised backsight just to the rear of the breech, leaf foresight at the muzzle. Wooden ramrod of oval section with horn tip. Length overall 451/2 in Barrel length 293/4 in This magnificent sporting gun was made in Tula, a city just over 100 miles south of Moscow which had been involved in arms manufacture since the late sixteenth century and had close ties with the central Armoury workshops in the Moscow Kremlin where Tula armourers went regularly for training. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, at a time when quantities of good quality munition weapons were required, Peter the Great (reigned 1682–1725) established a state armoury there to satisfy the needs of the Russian army during the latter stages of the Great Northern War (1700–21). When peace came, however, the government’s need for military weapons was drastically reduced and so the armoury’s craftsmen were encouraged to turn more and more to the production of finequality weapons for the civilian market. These craftsmen were more home workers than factory 132
workers, plying most of their trade from their own workshops but using the armoury and its equipment for complicated operations like the boring and turning barrels. As the Russian economy developed so the demand for luxury goods grew and the craftsmen of Tula broadened their production to meet the demands of an increasingly affluent aristocracy for all sorts of luxury goods from chess sets to coaches, though the production of firearms and edged weapons always remained their main business. The westernising policies of Peter the Great had the effect of making these newly affluent consumers demand not traditional Russian styles and forms but fashionable, western European ones. Therefore early in the eighteenth century the craftsmen of Tula had to turn away from traditional Russian types of form and decoration and perfect those commonly used in Western
Europe, including westernised shoulder stocks for long guns, chiselled steel ornament, the inlay of wood with silver wire and engraved plaques, and the production of twist or ‘Damascus’ barrels. They were helped to do this by the policy of employing foreign craftsmen to work alongside them, mostly gunmakers from the German lands and Scandinavia, and their influence can be seen, for instance, in the often quite Germanic stock forms of Tula guns. In this regard the full stock of our sporting gun and its pronounced cheek rest seem to be inspired by Germanic prototypes. However, in eighteenth-century Russia it was France that was regarded as the leader in fashion and it was to French decorative arts that the craftsmen of Tula turned for the inspiration of much of their decoration. On many Tula guns of the mid-century much of the silver inlaid ornament on their stocks can be traced back to the pattern-book published by Nicholas Guérard in Paris earlier in the century, a pirated edition of which was published by Johann Christoph Weigel of Nuremberg and which was widely circulated in the gunmaking trade. However, too much has been made of Guérard’s influence on the ornament of Tula guns which, in fact, show evidence of far more diverse sources of inspiration, though the influence of French fashion remains clear. While the use of silver-wire inlay to decorate stocks continued throughout the second half of the century, generally becoming more delicate, the manner of decorating the steel of locks, barrels and mounts changed considerably. In the mid-century the fashion was for heavily chiselled ornament on a gilt ground but by the 1760s a far lighter and more delicate type of decoration came into favour following the French fashion (see the holsters, no. 26 in this catalogue) in which bright steel surfaces were chiselled and inlaid in precious metals with rocaille and flowers. Our gun is a superb example of this type of embellishment. The oval-bore barrel of this gun is a most unusual and intriguing feature. Occasionally blunderbusses dating from the mid-eighteenth century onwards are found with elliptically expanded muzzles, presumably in an attempt to spread the shot more horizontally than vertically. For a birding gun the advantage of this is obvious as it would appear to give more chance for a shooter ‘leading a bird’ to hit it. Unfortunately, however, the theory was incorrect, at least as far as expanded muzzles were concerned, and the effect of an oval bore was probably also insignificant. The maker of our exceptional gun, whose name can most accurately be transliterated as G. Kuprin, appears to be otherwise unrecorded. However, in overall style our gun is very close to one in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (inv. no. З.O.5632) by the Tula maker A. Leontyev. The steelwork of that gun, however, 135
is blued, it has a conventional barrel, and the lock does not have a safety catch, but the rest of its form and decoration is very similar to that of ours, exhibiting the same mix of flower and rocaille decoration that dates them both to around 1770. Both Leontyev’s gun and Kuprin’s exhibit the highest standards of artistry attained by the gunmakers of Tula. Provenance
Private collection, USA
Literature
Vladimir Berman (ed), Masterpieces of Tula Gun-makers, Moscow, 1981, pp. 6–7 J. F. Hayward, The Art of the Gunmaker, vol. 2, 1660–1830, London, 1963, pp. 178–9 Valentin Mavrodin, Firearms and Edged Weapons in the Hermitage, Leningrad: Fine Arms from Tula, New York, 1977, p. 6, pls 71, 72 H. L. Peterson, ‘The Eighteenth Century and the End of the Flintlock’, in C. Blair (ed.), Pollard’s History of Firearms, Feltham, 1983, p. 151 Leonid Tarassuk, ‘The Collection of Arms and Armour in the State Hermitage, Leningrad: Patris Mei Memoriae: 2. The Collection of Russian Arms and Armour’, Journal of the Arms and Armour Society, vol. V, nos 4–5, March 1966, pp. 222, 251, 258
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The Magnificent Indian Gold-mounted Smallsword presented by Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, to Lieutenant Colonel John Edmonson of the Bengal Army, dated 1785 Of smallsword form, the hilt and scabbard mounts cast and chased in fine gold. The hilt in the neoclassical taste, its decoration all cast, chased and engraved upon a polished ground: the urnshaped pommel cast and chased in relief with a band and swags of laurel leaves and engraved with dotted swags depending from rays; the knucklebow, quillons, quillon block and arms of the hilt all cast in one piece, of rectangular section, chased in relief with borders and wreaths of laurel leaves and engraved with multipointed stars and serpentine-and-dart borders; the oval shell polished on the blade side and cast and chased with a laurel leaf border on the hilt side, the border enclosing two engraved trophies of arms and two multifaceted stars from each of which depend pairs of floral sprays; the four-sided grip cast and chased in relief, the sides bordered by lines of laurel leaves and with wreaths of laurel leaves enclosing two of the three presentation inscriptions; three sides of the grip set with three oval, blue, translucent, champlevé enamel panels terminating in engraved rays and enclosing the following inscriptions: this sword was presented a.d 1785
by the honorable the government genl. of india in testimony of their approbation of his services
to lieut. colonel john edmonson who during the late war served in the detachment of bengal troops in the carnatic The wooden scabbard covered in white-painted vellum and bearing three gold mounts, each with scalloped edges, cast and chased with laurel leaf motifs, the upper and middle mount each fitted with a loose ring. The blade of concave triangular section, blued, engraved and decoratively gilded for about one-third of its length. Overall length 41⅞ in Blade length 35 in Our sword occupies a very significant place in the taxonomy of British eighteenth century presentation swords and is comparable in its historic importance to the sword presented by the East India Company to Lieutenant Colonel James Hartley in 1779 and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (inv. no. M.39–1960) – a sword with which it shares certain elements of its design and style of manufacture as well as its source and type of recipient. Scholars now agree 144
that the East India Company was the first British institution to present swords to its officers, and to officers of the British army serving in India, in recognition of their achievements and that this practice began during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. Our Edmonson sword is one of three that were awarded by the Governor General and the Council of the East India Company to officers who had been in senior command of a detachment
of Bengal troops sent as reinforcements to the Madras army during the Second Mysore War of 1780–3: it is the only one of the three now known to survive. Its recipient, John Edmonson, was probably born in about 1745. Nothing is known of his background but the fact that he came from the city of Liverpool, on the north-west coast of England, suggests that his father, or another of his male relations, may well have been a merchant or shipowner of that increasingly prosperous city. Initially, Edmonson was posted to the Bombay army, sailing in the East Indiaman Latham from Portsmouth on 25 April 1763. For a young and ambitious man, this was a good time to be going to India: the Seven Years War was almost at its end and French traders and soldiers had been largely ejected from the subcontinent, leaving it free for the British East India Company to widen its trading activities, extend its influence and expand into the vacuum in Indian politics left by the departing French. Edmonson was commissioned ensign in the Bombay infantry late in 1763. In June 1765 he transferred to the Bengal infantry in the rank of lieutenant and was promoted captain in June 1767, serving in that rank in command of the 18th Battalion of Bengal Sepoys (native infantry) during the 1st Rohilla War of 1774 and participating in the battle of Kutra on 23 April 1774. In October 1779 he was promoted major in command of the 12th Battalion of Bengal Sepoys and was associated with that battalion until his death, being recorded as proudly declaring on one occasion that every soldier in his battalion was brave enough to ‘take a tyger by the tooth’. On the outbreak of the Second Mysore War in 1780, the Madras army found itself seriously outnumbered by the forces of Haidar Ali, ruler of Mysore, and his son and heir, Tipu Sultan. Haidar Ali resented and resisted efforts by the East India Company to increase its influence in Mysore and southern India and, having sought and received French aid, invaded the Carnatic, in the south-west of India, in 1780, quickly capturing a number of British minor outposts and threatening the garrison of Fort St George in Madras itself. The Governor General of India, Warren Hastings (1732–1818), resolved to send a brigade from the Bengal army to relieve the siege of Fort St George and to act as reinforcements for the Madras army against Haidar Ali. This brigade was commanded by Colonel Thomas Deane Pearse (1741/42–89); Edmonson was appointed Pearse’s second-in-command. Pearse’s brigade consisted of five battalions of sepoys and an artillery detachment and joined the Madras field army, commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Eyre Coote kb (1726–83), shortly after its victory over Haidar’s forces at Porto Novo on 1 July 1781. For the following two years, Pearse’s brigade was in the forefront of the action against Haidar 145
in the Carnatic, gaining enormous credit and praise for its part in the battles of Polillur, 27 August 1781, Sholinghur, 27 September 1781, and Cuddalore, 13 June 1783. Although the war ended in 1783 – when Haidar, having lost the remains of his French support, was forced, temporarily, to concede defeat – Pearse’s brigade did not return to Bengal until early in 1785 and then with only 2,000 men of the original 5,000 sent in 1781. Warren Hastings also wished to bestow some mark of honour on the senior British officers of the brigade, not only personally to reward and thank them for their services but also as a parting gift: the Governor General had been summoned home to Britain and was shortly to depart. This gift was recorded in the minutes of the meeting of the East India Company’s governing Council, at Fort William, Calcutta, on 26 January 1785 as follows: The detachment sent from this presidency to the relief of the Carnatic consisted, in its original formation, of about 5,000 men, and is now reduced, by the service that it has seen, to less than 2,000. These small remains being returned to Ghyretty, the Gov.-Gen. yesterday visited their encampment; and he hopes that the Board will allow that indulgence to his feelings, excited by the mixed sentiments of gratitude and regret which were impressed by the occasion, as to accept with candour the following remuneration which it has induced him to make in their behalf. The board have liberally rewarded the services of the Native officers and privates of the detachment . . . Such additional honours as may be bestowed, the Gov.-Gen. now begs leave to recommend; and these are as follows:1st, That a sword be given to Col. Pearse, the commanding officer of the corps, and that one to each of the Lieut.-Col.’s, his second and third in command, Lieut.-Col. Edmonstone, and Lieut.-Col. Blane, both as a testimony of their faithful and meritorious services, and for the incitement of example to others their juniors. The second and third ‘additional honours’ were the confirmation of all officers in the ranks in which they had served while with the brigade and the recording of their services with the brigade in their personal files. Thus it was that Lieutenant Colonel John Edmonson, who had been promoted to that rank while on service in the Carnatic on 3 December 1782, was confirmed in his rank and received our fine smallsword, with its gold hilt recording the circumstances of its presentation. Edmonson continued to serve in India after 1785, commanding the 3rd Bengal Brigade and the Sepoy Corps at Barrackpore from July 1787 until his death, which took place while travelling on 146
the River Ganges, on 31 January 1789. He had married a Miss Sarah Ware in Calcutta on 15 March 1787 and following his death she married a fellow officer, Captain James Pearson (1752/53– 1826), who had served with Edmonson in the Carnatic. Before remarrying, Edmonson’s widow
oversaw his interment in the South Park Street Burial Ground in Calcutta on 2 February 1789 and subsequently raised a tablet to his memory in St Mary’s Church, Calcutta, the text of which read:
Post varios Casus, varios post, Belli Labores Hic procul a Patria Indi propter Ripas Edmondsoni Legionis Praefecti Ossa quiescunt Quem Rohillorum Praedatoriae Manus Impia quem Agmina Hyderi, quem Indiae fasti Invictum Testantur Indomitum Mors Sola Negat Bellicae Virtutis praemio Gladio honorifico donatum voluit Anglia grata Moribus ornate Castus Sodalitio Comis Hospitio largus Munificus Denique bonus, omnibus Carus Vixit ad Aetat 44 Ann. Flebilis Obiit Jan 31 A.D. 1789. O Qui cunque Audes Moliri grandia, disce Edmondsoni instar Vivere, disce mori Which may be translated as: After various calamities, after many labours of war here, far from his homeland, close to the banks of the Indus lie the bones of Edmonson, lieutenant colonel, whom the predatory bands of Rohillas, whom the unholy battle lines of Hyder, whom the annals of India attest as ‘Unconquered’. Death alone denied him, indomitable, the reward for his virtue in war. A grateful England voted him a sword of honour. Eminently pure in his character, kind in his friendship, liberal and bountiful in his hospitality, at the last, a good man, dear to all, he lived to the age of 44 years; mourned, he died on 31 January 1789. Oh, whatever grand designs you dare to undertake, learn to live and learn to die the equal of Edmonson
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As the sole surviving example of the three swords presented by the East India Company to its Bengal officers for the Second Mysore War, Edmonson’s sword is historically important. As one of the few known examples of swords presented by the Company during the eighteenth century, and hitherto unrecorded, it is a significant item. As an example of a British presentation smallsword with a gold and enamel hilt in the neoclassical taste – a fashion in 1785 still in its infancy – it represents a noteworthy milestone in the development of the design of British presentation swords. It is particularly interesting to note that the sword is completely unmarked: the gold hilt and scabbard mounts do not bear the mark of any goldsmith or of any assay office, nor is the upper mount of the sword’s scabbard engraved with the name of any retailing sword cutler. This conspicuous lack of marking may imply that it was designed and made in India and, if so, probably in Calcutta by one of the few British goldsmiths active in that city, the Indian headquarters of the East India Company. If this is the case, it is the only such sword known 148
to exist – all other recorded near-contemporary examples being marked in some way and all, thus far, identified, through their various marks, as being made and sold in England. Provenance
Private collecion, USA
Literature
C. Blair, Three Presentation Swords, London, 1972 V. C. P. Hodson, List of Officers of the Bengal Army 17601834, vol. II (D–K), London, 1928, p. 121. Holmes & Co., The Bengal Obituary . . . being a compilation of monumental inscriptions . . ..biographical sketches and memoirs, Calcutta, 1848, p.76. L. Southwick, London Silver-hilted Swords: Their Makers, Suppliers and Allied Traders with Directory, Leeds, 2001 J. Philippart, The East India Military Calendar Ccontaining the Services of General and Field Officers of the Indian Army, London, 1823–26), vol. I, pp. 88–9; vol. II, pp. 218, 247–50 Captain J. Williams, An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Bengal Native Infantry from its first formation in 1757, to 1796, . . . with a detail of the service on which the several battalions have been employed during that period, London, 1817, pp. 164–5
31
An Exceptional Russian Flintlock Sporting Gun for a Boy by Churkin, Tula, Dated 1787 Bright steel lock with flat plate and swan-neck cock engraved with leaf scrolls within cusped and dotted borders and inlaid in gold on the cock with a flower, on the cock screw with a sunburst, and on the plate ahead of the cock tyλа, pan of angular, faceted form and back of the frizzen chiselled with a floral motif. Figured walnut full stock with cheek rest carved with ribs and decorative scrolls around the major elements and inlaid with silver wire scrollwork decoration, including at the wrist a Russian closed crown surrounded by flags, with horn fore-end cap. The mounts of bright steel are engraved with foliate scrolls and inlaid with engraved and gold floral ornament, the side plate cut out as a ribbon surround to the single side nail and has silver wire scrolls inset in the stock in the panels thus revealed. The butt plate has a short, stepped tang with chiselled and engraved finial of floral form, the trigger guard tangs have similar finials. The horn-tipped ramrod is secured by three pipes and the barrel by three slides. The two-stage barrel is blued and decorated on the octagonal section with inlaid gold and silver flowers and eight-pointed stars. On the top flat inlaid in gold is the name of the maker f. чypкинz within a dotted border. The stepped bright steel tang is engraved with foliate scrollwork and has a raised and scooped backsight at its forward end. Overall length 32¼ in Barrel length 21⅛ in This superb boy’s gun was made in Tula where, in the mid-eighteenth century, the fashion had been for heavily chiselled ornament on a gilt ground but in the 1760s a far lighter and more delicate type of decoration came into favour following the French fashion in which bright steel surfaces were chiselled and inlaid with precious metals with rocaille and flowers (see no. 27). By the 1780s the rocaille ornament was much reduced and the decorative scheme was entirely dominated by flowers. Our fine boy’s gun is a most elegant example of a gun embellished in this later manner. The maker of this masterpiece is something of a mystery. Relatively few Tula makers actually signed their work, though the practice became more common as the eighteenth century drew to its close. Some names are known, including those of Krapíventsov, Leóntiev, Liálin, Makárischev, Polin, Sálischev and Tretiakóv, and for some of these details of their careers can be assembled, but most of the craftsmen of Tula remained 150
anonymous. For a discussion of the development of the arms industry there and of its distinctive styles see nos 25 and 28 in this catalogue. The maker of our gun appears to be otherwise unrecorded and, indeed, even the transliteration of the name itself is uncertain. Given as I. Kurkin in our 1996 catalogue it has more recently been read as F. Churkin. The first initial engraved in cursive script does not correspond to any letter in the Cyrillic alphabet and may suggest that the engraving was done by a foreign craftsman, as does the reversed from of the initial letter of the surname. The final ‘Z’ is the old sign for hardening the ‘N’ at the end of the name. In the later eighteenth century boys’ guns seem to have been something of a speciality of the Tula makers, though few are known that display the quality and elegance of our gun. Surviving examples include sporting guns for the sons of Tsarovitch Paul (1754–1801) who reigned as tsar for only five years before his assassination in 1801. When this gun was made Paul had only two
sons, the Grand Duke Alexander Pávlovitch (born 1777) who was to reign as Tsar Alexander I from 1801 to 1825, and his younger brother Grand Duke Konstantine Pávlovitch (1779–1831) who abdicated the throne soon after the death of his elder brother in 1825 in favour of his younger brother, Nicholas (born 1796). In the collections of the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg are a series of presents from Empress Catherine II (known as ‘the Great’, reigned 1762– 96) to Alexander, all made by Tula gunmakers. The earliest is a set of miniature guns made for his fifth birthday in 1782, and the latest a sporting gun some twenty-four inches overall dated 1782. Also in the Hermitage are other Tula-made guns belonging to the young Alexander, including a pair of pistols and matching long gun by the maker I. Krapíventsov and a sporting gun dated 1787, the same date as ours which is just under thirty-six inches long. The Hermitage also has a number of guns made elsewhere in Russia for the young Alexander, including a fine sporting gun by Johan Adolphe Grecke made in St Petersburg in 1779. Of the guns made for young Grand Duke Konstantine, however, there remains in the Hermitage only a pair of pistols dating to the mid 1780s. Our boy’s gun has on the wrist a depiction of the Russian imperial crown and it is, therefore, very likely that it was made for a member of the Russian royal family, and probably for one or other of the Grand Dukes Alexander and Konstantine. They were born only two years apart and when this gun was made would have been respectively ten and eight years old. As it seems probable that both an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old could have shot this gun comfortably, it is not possible to be certain for which of the brothers it was made. However, as we know that Alexander had a gun made for him in the same year that was some three and a half inches longer than ours, it seems on balance more likely that it was made not for him but for his younger brother Konstantine. As such it is of very particular interest as so few guns made for him as a child are known to survive. Provenance
Prince Lwoff collection Private collection, USA
Literature
Leonid Tarassuk, ‘The Collection of Arms and Armour in the State Hermitage, Leningrad: Patris Mei Memoriae: 2. The Collection of Russian Arms and Armour’, Journal of the Arms and Armour Society, vol. V, nos 4–5, March 1966, pp. 251–2, 258 Leonid Tarassuk, Antique European and American Firearms in the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, 1972, pp. 180–1, nos 281, 294–6
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32
A Fine Spanish Miquelet Lock Sporting Gun by Antonio Guisasola Made in the Royal ‘Factory’ at Placencia, dated 1788 Bright steel miquelet lock with external mainspring, ring-headed jaw screw and serrated face to the frizzen. The lockplate and cock engraved with floral and foliate scrolls, the toe of the cock chiselled as a shell and the back of the frizzen chiselled with a grotesque foliate mask. Between the cock and the pan the lockplate is struck with a gold-lined mark bearing beneath a coronet the name an/ton./ gvi/sas/ola. The underside of the barrel is stamped at the breech mro esamr p s m placa guipa 1788. Fruitwood half stock with traditional Spanish ‘ boot-shaped’ butt, carved behind the barrel tang, at the rear of the side and lock flats, and around the fore-end with foliate and floral scrolls. The mounts of iron, the scroll trigger guard with a front tang chiselled as a foliate baluster and engraved on the bow in an oval escutcheon with the royal Bourbon arms of three fleur-de-lis encircled by the Collar of the Order of St Michael, with the Badges of the Order of St Michael and the Order of the Holy Spirit pendant from it. The arms are surmounted by the crown of an infante or a ducal coronet and flanked by angel supporters, below the badges of the orders, the decoration ends with a panel of addorsed interlacing leaf scrolls. The side plate has fretted edges cut to follow the engraved ornament of leaf scrolls involving flowers and pelicans and a central scene of a pelican feeding its young on its own blood. The barrel is secured by a pierced band, the wooden ramrod by a single baluster pipe. The blued, two-stage barrel of octagonal section inlaid with engraved silver decoration in the form of running floral and foliate scrolls involving hounds, hare, boar, stag and birds highlighted with gold. At the breech the two visible side flats are stamped with gold-filled fleur-de-lis and the central flat with four gold-filled marks: a foliate cross; a fleur-de-lis; a covered crown above ant./gui/sas/ ola; and a rampant lion. The bright steel tang is engraved with rococo leaf scrolls. Overall length 52 in Barrel length 36¾ in This is a fine example of a Spanish sporting gun made in traditional style with the exaggerated ‘boot-shaped’ butt that was fashionable in eighteenth-century Spain. It was made in 1788 by the Eibar gunmaker Antonio Guisasola. The same mark as appears on the barrel of our gun, with the closed crown and his name, also appears on the barrel of a superb silver-mounted gun he made in 1796 in conjunction with Juan Navarro for presentation to King Carlos IV of Spain (1748–1819, reigned 1788–1808) that is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc. no. 16.135). The stamping on the underside of the barrel of our gun shows that it was made in the royal ‘factory’ at Placencia, a village near Guisasola’s home town in the northern Spanish 156
province of Guipúscoa which had been involved in arms manufacture since the fourteenth century. The full inscription would read as maestro examinador por su majestad palencia guipúscoa (Master Inspector for His Majesty, Placencia, Guipúscoa) and indicates that the gun was made, or at least inspected and approved, at the royal arms ‘factory’ at Placencia. As it is known that Guisasola himself was Master Inspector there from 1790 to 1833 it suggests strongly that our gun was made as part of the official business of the factory for some royal purpose. However, it appears that at this time the ‘factory’ operation at Placencia was not a factory in the conventional sense. When the author and politician Caspar de Jovellanos visited the area
in 1791 he found that the guns were made not in one place but by craftsmen working in Placencia itself and the surrounding towns and villages of Ermua, Eibar, Elgoibar and Mondragón with the work subdivided between barrelmakers, lockmakers, stockmakers and mountmakers. For most of the time these craftsmen worked on their own private commissions, the king contracting for those guns that he required and relying on a local director to ensure delivery. Given this loose organisation of the ‘factory’ at Placencia our fine and elegant gun could either have been a private or a royal commission, though the fact that it was inspected on behalf of the King strongly suggests that it may have been a royal commission. It has previously been suggested that the gun was made for presentation to King Louis XVI of France by King Carlos IV of Spain on his accession to the throne in 1788. The arms on the trigger guard are certainly those of the Bourbon family but do not accurately represent the royal arms of France, which at this time had the arms of Navarre impaled with the Bourbon arms, nor are they surmounted by either a French regal or princely crown. The chivalric orders referred to are both French. Although the Order of Saint Michael was the earlier, being founded in 1469, it was the Order of the Holy Spirit, founded in 1578, that became the senior order, and anyone who became a knight of it was automatically also a knight of Saint Michael. In 1788, when this gun was made, there were appear to be no French Bourbons who were members of these orders whose arms should have been depicted in this way. As this gun was made in Spain and as Spain had been ruled by the Bourbon family since 1700 it therefore seems likely that this gun was made for a Spanish member of the Bourbon family who was a Knight of the Holy Spirit and St Michael. In 1788 there would appear to be only three possible candidates who were of an age to receive such a gun - the three surviving sons of King Carlos III (ruled 1759–88), Carlos, Ferdinand and Gabriel. Carlos, the Spanish heir apparent and Prince of Asturias and Viana (1748–1819), became 158
Carlos IV on the death of his father in December 1788. He was renowned for his strength and love of hunting. Indeed, during his reign he showed much more inclination to hunt than to become involved in the minutiae of politics and ruling his kingdom. He, therefore, would have appreciated a fine hunting gun like this. Ferdinando (1751–1825) ruled as Ferdinand III of Sicily and Ferdinand IV of Naples from 1759 and is also known to have been a keen hunter, so the gun would also have been an appropriate gift for him. Gabriel (1752–88) as the youngest son was given the title of infante, which in Spain denoted the child of a monarch who was not in line to succeed. Born and brought up in Naples he moved to Spain when his father became King and, together with his wife and only surviving son, died of smallpox in November 1788 at El Escorial. Of the three brothers he was the most cultured, being renowned as a classical scholar and musician and was, perhaps, the least interested in hunting, but there is no reason whatever why such a gun should not have been made for him. The image of the pelican feeding her young with her own blood that appears on the side plate speaks of the piety of the owner as this was symbolic of the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, and this imagery is likely to have appealed to the scholar in Gabriel. At first sight what is depicted above the arms seems to be a normal ducal coronet, which would be inappropriate for Gabriel, but close inspection suggests that the engraver has intended to show the velvet cloth cover arching within the circlet which denotes the crown of an infante. It, therefore, seems most likely that this elegant gun was made for the infante Gabriel shortly before his tragic death. Provenance
Private collection, USA
Literature
Ramiro Larrañaga, Síntesis Histórica de la Armería Vasca, Caja de Ahorros, 1981 James Lavin, A History of Spanish Firearms, London, 1965, p. 142–4, 262, pl 56
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36
Five-panelled iron cuirass (yukinoshita-do) with gold and silver inlay, Japanese, Edo period, circa 1830–40 The panels of the cuirass are of russet iron, joined by silvered hinges. The front panel is decorated in silver inlay with a Buddhist deity, the four-headed and twelve-eyed god of love Aizen Myoo (Ragaraja) seated on his Chinese lion (shishi), his upper pair of arms holding a halberd and pagoda, his other four sets of arms wielding swords. On his head he wears a lion’s head (shishika), surmounted by a tiny Dainichi Nyorai, the Buddha from whom boundless light emanates. Above the front panel are two narrow plates, the lower decorated in silver and gold overlay with cloud scrolls, chrysanthemums and the seven stars, the upper with a dragon between phoenixes. The other main panels are decorated with a calligraphic prayer or gohonzon dedicated to the Nichiren sect of Japanese esoteric Buddhism. The rear panel is made of three vertical plates and a horizonal upper plate, all riveted together, with shoulder straps hinged at ether side, each with a hinged shoulder defence and forward section. At the centre of the rear panel is the odaimokyu, the mantra of the Nichiren Buddhist sect, Namu Myoho Rengekyo (Hail the Lotus Sutra), with the name of Nichiren placed on a lotus throne below it. The name of Aizen Myoo, usually included in the gohonzen of Nichiren, is omitted as he features so prominently on the armour. Each shoulder strap component is decorated with a single dragon. The left side panel is formed of a single main plate with a narrow upper plate, while the right side is formed of two narrow panels, each with its upper plate, hinged to the front and rear. Around the waist are pairs of holes for the attachment of the kusazuri; the shoulder plates are all pierced for cords, and the front main panel is pierced for sugake lacing at the top. The entire interior retains traces of gilding. Overall height 15½ in Overall width 13½ in Japanese transcription and English translation of the inscriptions on the armour, read from right to left across the rear: Right front panel 1 Namu Tendai Dengyo Daibutsu Hail the great Buddhas Tendai and Dengyo [the posthumous name for Saicho, 766–822, who founded the Tendai or Lotus Sutra sect of Japanese esoteric Buddhism] 2 Honke betto-ji Nichigen [seal] First convert and chief priest Nichigen [before 1263–1315, converted from the Tendai temple Jisso-ji to follow Nichiren in 1270 and founded numerous temples after Nichiren’s death] 184
Right rear panel 3 Dai mandara nari This is the great mandala 4 Hachi dai ryuo Eight great dragon kings 5 Dai Komokuten Great Komokuten [Virupaksa, one of the Four Buddhist Heavenly Kings, shitenno, guardian of the west] Rear panel 1 Dai Jikokuten Great Jikokuten [Dhrtarastra, one of the Four Heavenly Kings, guardian of the east]
2 Dai Nitten daio, santenno Great sun god, three deities 3 Namu Muhengyo Bosatsu, dai roku tenmao, Amaterasu Omikami Hail Bodhisattva Muhengyo, great six demon gods, Amaterasu [the Shinto sun goddess] 4 Namu Jogyo Bosatsu, dai Bontenno, hachi tenno, Kishimojin Hail Bodhisattva Jogyo, great Bonten, the eight deities, Kishimojin [Harita, goddess of mothers and children] 5 Namu Taho Nyorai Hail Buddha Taho [the Buddha of Many Treasures] 6 Namu Myoho Rengekyo, Nichiren ‘Hail the Lotus Sutra’, Nichiren [the odaimokyu or mantra of the Nichiren sect of Japanese Buddhism and the name of its founder, 1222–82] 7 Namu Shakyamuni Butsu Hail Buddha Shakyamuni 8 Namu Jyogyo Bosatsu, Shateikan’in daio, Ju rasetsu nyo Hail Bodhisattva Jyogyo, Buddhist deity Shateikan’in, ten demons [Rakshasa] 9 Namu Anryugyo Bosatsu, Dai Gattenno, Hachiman dai Bosatsu Hail Bodhisattva Anryugyo, great moon god, Bodhisattva Hachiman [originally a Shinto deity popular with samurai] 10 Dai Myojo tenshi Great angel Myojo [the star messenger] 11 Dai Bishamonten Great Bishamonten [Vaisravana, one of the Four Heavenly Kings, armour-clad guardian of the north] 186
Left panel 1 Dai Zochoten Great Zochoten [Virudhaka, one of the Four Heavenly Kings, guardian of the south] 2 Nichiro, Nissh,o Nisshin shonin Holy priests Nichiro, Nissho, and Nisshin [disciples of Nichiren; Nichoro 1245–1320 nephew of Nissho, c. 1236–1323] 3 Nichiju, Nikkan, Nittatsu shonin Holy priests Nichiju, Nikkan, and Nittatsu [later followers of Nichiren; Nichiju 1314–92, converted by Nichijin from the Tendai sect in 1379, Nikkan arrested and executed in 1668, Ryogi Nittatsu 1674–1747, author of the important Shinto work Shinbutsu Myo-oron] 4 Butsumetsudo go nisen nihyaku niju yo nen 5 no aida ichienfutei 6 mizou no dai mandara nari After the death of Buddha more than two thousand, two hundred and twenty years this great mandala to save the people of the world appeared The calligraphy of our armour is carefully arranged in its symmetry, just as on a conventional gohonzen in ink on paper. Placed about the central mandala are the names of the Four Heavenly Kings of Buddhism (the shitenno), reading from right to left across the back Zochoten, Jikokuten, Bishamonten and Komokuten, guardians of the south, east, north and west respectively. At either side of the mandala are invocations (beginning Namu, ‘Hail’) to the Buddhas Shakyamuni and Taho, and to the four Boddhisatvas Muhengyo, Jogyo, Jyogyo and Anryugyo. Sun balances moon, and Shinto deities Amaterasu and Hachiman placed in apposition across the mandala. The mixture of Shinto and Buddhist deities recalls the syncretism of Nichiren’s Buddhism, and reminds us how intertwined the two religions were until their forceful separation following the Meiji restoration of 1868.
Nichiren (1222–82) was a historical Buddhist monk of the Kamakura period, founder of a major school of esoteric Buddhism that, despite conflict with and periods of repression by the authorities, remains important in the present day. His revolutionary beliefs included the ideas that women could attain enlightenment and that anyone could become a Buddha. On the left side panel of the cuirass the names of important monks of his sect appear, first three of his contemporary disciples, Nichiro, Nichizo and Nisshin, then three of his later followers, Nichiju, Nikkan and Nittatsu. The last of these, Ryogi Nittatsu (1674–1747), gives the armour a terminus post quem. Armours of the Edo period with embossed cuirasses (uchidashi-do) decorated with Buddhist themes are relatively common. The warlike deity Fudo Myoo, with his sword and aura of flames, is a particular favourite with samurai. Decoration with silver overlay is less common, but attested; an armour signed by Myochin Muneakira in the Egerton Collection at Manchester City Art Gallery is decorated with Bishamonten in silver and gold overlay. The god of love, Aizen Myoo is otherwise unrecorded as the subject of an armour. The dedication to Nichiren is paralleled by another armour, formerly in the collection of John Anderson. Signed on the mempo by Myochin Muneyasu, this armour has a smooth hotokedo or ‘saint’s breast’, decorated in gold lacquer with the odaimokyu of Nichiren. The similarity in style between our cuirass and signed pieces by Muneyasu makes it highly likely that he was its maker. He was the leading armour maker of the Myochin family in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, with works dated between 1830 and 1843, a retainer of the Tsuyama family and teacher of a number of prominent Myochin armourers of the following generation who also specialised in armour of russet iron.
188
There is no indication that the cuirass was ever laced, and it may have been made as a work of art, like the helmet in the form of an abalone shell with forecrest (maedate) decorated with Fudo Myoo in the Fitzwilliam Museum (inv. no. HEN.467.1933), signed by Myochin Muneakira and Munesuke and dated 1712 and 1719. However, a helmet (maru bachi no kabuto) formerly in the Galeno collection in California has such strikingly similar decoration, with dragons on the skull, kiri flowers and foliage on the peak (mabisashi) and simple cloud scrolls on the russet iron plates of the neck guard (shikoro), that it might very well be from the same armour. The helmet is inscribed with the signatures of the early Edo smith Shigekatsu, probably for Myochin Shigekatsu, but its mounting and decoration clearly date from the late Edo period. It was very common for later Edo armourers to incorporate earlier helmet skulls in their armours: Muneyasu’s other recorded armours, for example, incorporate helmets by the seventeenth-century armourers Saotome Iyesada and Nagasone Masanori. The shikoro is sugake laced in dark blue, perhaps indicating the original or intended mounting of our cuirass. The patron for whom this armour was made is unknown; Anderson speculated that his armour was made for a priest of the militant Nichiren sect, and this seems equally likely for our cuirass also. Provenance
Private collection, USA
Literature
L. J. Anderson, Japanese Armour: An Illustrated Guide to the Work of the Myochin and Saotome Families from the 15th to the 20th Century, London, 1968, p. 53 I. Bottomley, ‘A remarkable armour’, Royal Armouries Yearbook vol. 2, 1997, pp. 144–8 I. Bottomley, Japanese Armor: The Galeno Collection, Berkeley, 1998, pp. 62–3 K. K. Chappelear, Japanese Armor Makers for the Samurai, Tokyo, 1987, pp. 91–4, 166–73, 252–3
38
An Important Cased Pair of American Percussion Pocket Pistols by Henry Deringer, Philadelphia, circa 1850 The back-action locks are of case-hardened steel, engraved within a serpentine border with leaf scrolls, stamped behind the cock deringer philadel. The half stocks of walnut with chequered grips and beaked butts, some mounts are of coin silver and some of German silver, on each pistol the trigger guard, sideplate, and single barrel slide washers are of silver, as is the cover plate between the front of the lock and the nipple bolster mounts. The fore-end cap is of German silver as is the butt cap that has a hinged circular butt-trap cover. The larger mounts are engraved with leaf scrolls, the sideplate is decoratively shaped in a scroll pattern, the slide washers have opposed thistle finials and the front tang of the trigger guard is formed with a pineapple finial. Urn-shaped gold escutcheons engraved with leaf scrolls bordering the superimposed initials awb above the date 1884. The wooden ramrods with brass tips are retained by a single plain pipe beneath the barrel. The scroll trigger is of blued steel and has ahead of it in the steel trigger plate a pierced cylindrical adjusting screw. Octagonal barrels rifled with seven grooves with a marbled brown finish to all except the breech which is blued between bands of nine-carat gold. The top flat of the breech is stamped deringer philadel and the left flat with a p flanked by feathered arcs. A German silver leaf foresight is set on a silver block dovetailed into the barrel just to the rear of the muzzle. Lockable case with recessed brass carrying handle in the centre of the top, reinforced with brass strip along the top edges and corners and decorated with intersecting double lines of brass wire. The case is lined with purple velvet, padded on the inside of the lid, open cut-outs contain the pistols and a range of accessories consisting of wooden handled screwdriver and nipple wrench, oil bottle, bullet mould, powder flask and cleaning rods. Two lidded compartments contain ball and chamois. Overall length 9½ in  Barrel length 5 in The name Deringer is today synonymous with the little pocket pistols using a variety of ignition systems that were made in numerous sizes and calibres and with one or more barrels by a wide variety of makers and that came to be carried for personal use by many Americans, especially in the more lawless western states and territories, during the second half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century. These pistols were owned by men and women, honest citizens and criminals, civilians and soldiers, gamblers and gold miners. They were used in self-defence, for cold-blooded murder and for assassination. Their name derives from the name of the maker who developed a durable, dependable and effective percussion pocket pistol that answered 198
a real need in mid-nineteenth-century America, Henry Deringer of Philadelphia. Henry was born to German immigrant parents at Easton, Pennsylvania, in 1786. He was apprenticed as a gunmaker and, after a short period working at the Virginia Manufactory in Richmond, he moved to Philadelphia in about 1808 where he remained until his death in 1868. For all those sixty years he lived in North Front Street, until about 1812 at no. 300 and thereafter at no. 612, behind which he built a workshop approached via Tamarind Street. After his death Deringer’s business was continued until 1880 first by his son-in-law, Dr Jonathan Clark, and then by his son, I. Jones Clark. For the early part of his career Deringer concentrated upon the bulk production of flintlock military muskets
and flintlock trade rifles. He later claimed to have made his first pair of percussion pistols in 1825; he was certainly producing some pistols in the 1830s, but his first involvement in making large numbers of them came in 1845 when he acquired the machinery used by N. P. Ames of Springfield, Massachusetts, to fulfil a US government contract for 2,000 percussion pistols and contracted to produce 1,200 more. It may have been this that stimulated Deringer’s interest in bulk pistol production and it seems that he had begun to make his distinctive pocket pistols by the time of the California Gold Rush in 1849. However, it was not until the 1850s that they became really popular. Near the end of his life Deringer took legal action against one of the many who had copied his design and, posthumously, won the case. In his deposition for this action Deringer claimed to have made 5,280 pairs of pocket pistols between 1856 and 1865, 4,000 in the first five of those years and only 1,280 in the second period. The real popularity of the original Deringer pistol can, therefore, be seen to have been relatively short-lived. So, after the Civil War, with the technical advances that produced reliable metallic cartridges and robust breechloading systems, major US arms manufacturing companies such as Colt and Remington began producing cartridge ‘deringers’ and others soon followed, supplemented by imported European production. This whole market for deringers derived from Henry Deringer’s design for his percussion pocket pistol. While they may not have looked very special or different they obviously worked very well. The records of the trial already referred to give at least one clue to the success of Deringer’s pistol. In his evidence one gunmaker and retailer noted that the design of the stock meant that the pistol when held ‘is on a level’ and naturally points at the intended target. They rapidly became very sought-after and even the notoriety caused by the assassination of President Lincoln with one of them did nothing to reduce the growing popularity of the deringer. By family tradition our pistols were owned by Thomas Jefferson Brady (1839–1904) who was 200
born at Muncie, Indiana, and educated at Asbury College where he studied law. At the outbreak of the Civil War he raised the first company that went to fight from Delaware County. It would have been presumably around this time that he purchased and carried our pistols. Thereafter he served in the Indiana Infantry and then the Indiana Volunteer Infantry. He had risen to the rank of brevet Brigadier General by the time his military service came to an end in 1865. He purchased the Muncie Times in 1868, selling it in 1870 when President Grant appointed him US Consul to the West Indies island of St Thomas where he served until 1875. In 1876 he became a supervisor in the Internal Revenue Service and from 1876 to the end of his active working career in 1881 he served as 2nd Assistant Postmaster General. Brady had married Emmeline Wolfe in 1864 and it was to their son Arthur W. Brady, born just one year after the marriage in 1865, that the pistols were presented when he was nineteen years old and at Yale University. Their case is magnificent, being of brass-bound veneered rosewood, perhaps not made by Deringer – his cases being usually leather-covered and not having a carrying handle on the top, although the accessories are typical of other known cased pairs of his pistols. Our cased pair is of the highest quality attained by Henry Deringer. The pistols have the gold barrel bands and the mixture of German silver and silver mounts found only on the very best of his guns. They are very important in being early examples of his pocket model and from their overall form and the style of their front triggerguard tangs they are likely to date between 1848 and 1850. Provenance
Brady Family by descent
Literature
H. L. Blackmore, ‘The Percussion System’, Pollard’s History of Firearms, ed. C. Blair, Feltham 1983, p. 178 L. B. Eberhardt and R. L. Wilson, The Deringer in America: Volume One: The Percussion Period, Lincoln RI, 1985, pp. ix–x, 13–16
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An English Watercolour, painted 1894–7 by Edward Henry Corbould: ‘The Marquess of Waterford at The Eglinton Tournament August 31 1839’ Depicting Henry de la Poer Beresford, 3rd Marquess of Waterford, in armour and mounted on a caparisoned black horse, in the act of exchanging a broken lance for a new one, while at one end of a tilting yard, with tents and spectators in the background; inscribed, at bottom left, with the artist’s name Edward Henry Corbould, the date 1894 and the letters RI within an artist’s palette and, at bottom right, with the title ‘The Marquis of Waterford at The Eglinton Tournament August 31 1839’ and with the inscription ‘Painted expressly for Reginald Henry Pott Esq. by ƎHC his Father in Law Aged 82 1897’; glazed and contained in a gilt and gesso wooden frame; pasted to the back, a handwritten label bearing the inscription Victorian Era Exhibition 1897 Earl’s Court Lent by Reginald Henry Pott Esq. Scarsdale Villas Kensington W. and a printed label bearing the inscription v.e.e. 209 earl’s court. Height 23¼ in Width 32¼ in Painted six decades after the event depicted, our watercolour was executed by an artist who had been the Official Artist at the Eglinton Tournament of 1839: it survives today as probably the last depiction of that extraordinary event by someone who was actually present. The tournament held by Archibald William Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton (1812–61), at Eglinton Castle in Ayrshire in the last days of August 1839 inspired both interest and ridicule at the time and has remained a subject of fascination and study by scholars of arms and armour and of those early nineteenth-century phenomena, the ‘Gothic’ and ‘Romantic’ movements. Lord Eglinton, who had inherited his title and the vast wealth that accompanied it at the age of seven, was educated, ‘ineffectually . . . wretchedly . . . and riotously’ before leaving Eton to spend the years 1828–33 in ‘claret drinking, debauchery and steeplechasing’. After reaching his majority in 1833, he took his seat in the House of Lords, became colonel of the Ayrshire Militia and actively pursued an interest in racing. The tournament with which he will always be 212
associated was a personal, and Tory, reaction to the Whig government’s insistence on economies at the coronation of Queen Victoria in June 1838 that involved the omission of traditional chivalric pageantry. The idea of a medieval tournament was immediately popular since it took the imagination of a public that had witnessed a growth since the mid-eighteenth century in the ‘Gothic’ style in architecture, had seen a revival of interest in heraldry and pedigree since the beginning of the nineteenth century and had been increasingly exposed both to the novels of Sir Walter Scott and to works of art inspired by them: in the quartercentury between the publication of Waverley in 1814 and the Eglinton Tournament of 1839, 267 Scott-inspired paintings appeared on public exhibition. Alongside the growth of popular interest in the romantic notion of the medieval period came new technologies in printing and so illustrated editions of the works of Scott, as well as those of Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare, began to appear and to provide work for artists who specialised in painting ‘historical subjects’:
one of the most prolific of these was Edward Henry Corbould (1815–1905), the artist of our watercolour. Given his already well-established reputation as a painter of romantic historical subjects, Corbould was the obvious choice as the tournament’s Official Artist. Recruitment of his artist by Lord Eglinton accompanied recruitment of the participants in his tournament: six of the eventual knights had been with him at Eton and many other Etonian contemporaries were to serve in lesser roles in August 1839. Principal among the Etonian knights was Henry de la Poer Beresford, 3rd Marquess of Waterford (1811–59), whose short and rumbustious life has been dismissed by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as that of a ‘reprobate and landowner’. Waterford was undoubtedly a wild young aristocrat, even by the standards of the time: between 1829 and 1839, ‘he was to be found most frequently at the racetrack, on the hunting-field, or in the police 214
courts’. Enormously enthusiastic at the idea of the tournament, Waterford threw himself into his personal arrangements with characteristic gusto and extravagance. He bought his armour from the Bond Street dealer Samuel Luke Pratt, who had probably had it made in Germany and who had been entrusted by Lord Eglinton with overseeing much of the construction of the tournament area and its temporary buildings; Waterford’s armour still exists, in the British Royal Collection, which acquired it in 1840, but is currently on loan to the Royal Armouries (acc. nos RCIN 71650 and al81.1). As can be seen in our watercolour, and better than in any contemporary depiction of Waterford at the tournament – even those executed by Corbould at the time, Waterford also took the heraldic aspect of his appearance seriously: his livery colours predominate, the Beresford crest tops his close helmet, the Beresford crosses ‘fitchy’ figure on his shield and on his horse’s reins and caparison
as does the Beresford motto nil nisi cruce (nothing but by the Cross) and his shield of arms, quartering Beresford with De la Poer, dominates his horse’s flank. The dragon’s head crest of the Beresford family gave Lord Waterford his title for the tournament: the Knight of the Dragon. The tournament did not begin well: the arrangements for the first day, Wednesday 28 August, were marred by torrential rain and some organisational chaos but some courses were run in the increasingly muddy and waterlogged tiltyard. Of these courses, it appears that Lord Waterford engaged Lord Eglinton, ‘the Lord of the Tournament’, in what Anstruther describes as, ‘the only combat of any reality’, going on to say: Both were exceptionally able horsemen, both had taken their training seriously, both had comfortably fitting armour, both were out to prove their skill and, in spite of increasingly difficult conditions – for every hoofmark had become a puddle and the Lists had become extremely slippery – both dashed at each other as hard as they could. Although on the second course they missed, on the first and last Lord Eglinton engaged, striking the centre of the Dragon’s shield and breaking his spear on it perfectly. Anstruther, p. 210 The next day, the 29th, although drier, was spent in attempting to tidy the arena and repair the pavilions and stands so that, when Friday the 30th dawned and the sun came out, all was in readiness for what proved to be the tournament’s final day. Although courses were run, Anstruther does not record a prominent part in any being played by Lord Waterford, although he does record the famous loss of temper on Waterford’s part in the mêlée – which involved Waterford setting about Lord Alford, the Knight of the Black Lion, with such aggression that the two
peers had to be separated by the Knight Marshal. By Saturday the rain had begun again and so the tournament was finally abandoned. In 1894, when Corbould probably began our watercolour, he was aged seventy-nine, had been married three times, had been ‘Instructor in Historical Painting’ to the Royal Family since 1851 and had been a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours (RI) since 1837: after such a passage of time, his incorrect dating of the event he was depicting – which must be of the joust between Lords Eglinton and Waterford on 28 August – is understandable. The first owner of our watercolour, Reginald Henry Pott (1870–1957) had married Corbould’s daughter from his third marriage, Rosina Mary Corbould (1870–1955) in 1896 and, no doubt, been enthralled by his father-in-law’s tales of that early Victorian medieval pageant of nearly six decades before. Provenance
Private collection, England
Exhibited
Victorian Era Exhibition, Earl’s Court, London, 1897, item 209
Literature
I. Anstruther, The Knight and the Umbrella: an account of the Eglinton Tournament 1839, London, 1963 H. Mallalieu, ‘Edward Henry Corbould (1815–1905)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004 M. S. Millar, ‘Archibald William Montgomerie, thirteenth earl of Eglinton and first earl of Winton (1812–61)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004 K. D. Reynolds, ‘Henry de la Poer Beresford, third marquess of Waterford (1811–59)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004 K. Watts et al., ‘The Eglinton Tournament’ in Riddarlek och Tornerspel: Tournaments and the Dream of Chivalry, Stockholm, 1992, pp. 267–72, 449–52
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Cataloguing & displaying your collection
We can offer a full research, cataloguing and appraisal service utilising the extensive knowledge and experience of a variety of consultants and scholars. This can result in the creation of an illustrated catalogue of your collection, resulting not only in a permanent memorial but also in a valuable record for reference in the event of damage or loss. We can undertake both conservation and restoration work. We are always happy to help with the display of a collection. The display of suits of armour is crucially important. We can supply mannequins with fully articulated torsos and locking nuts and complete with excellent heads. We can offer two different models of horse: one with all four legs on the ground and one prancing.
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Books for sale We deal in the rarer out-of-print books and a list of some of our current titles is set out below. These are generally for the advanced collector or serious bibliophile. We are always interested in purchasing either entire libraries or rare single volumes. C. Boissonnas and Jean Boissonnas Alte Waffen aus der Schweiz, Paris and Berlin, 1914 James Drummond Ancient Scottish Weapons, Edinburgh and London, 1881 C. Gilot Nouveaux Desseins D’Arquebuserie, Paris, circa 1700 Erich Haenel Kostbare Waffen, Leipzig, 1923 [Kienbusch] The Kretzschmar von Kienbusch Collection of Armor and Arms, Princeton, 1963 G. F. Laking The Armoury of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, London, 1903 Sir G. F. Laking A Record of European Armour and Arms through Seven Centuries, 5 volumes, London, 1920–22 (sold with the following volume) F. H. Cripps-Day A Record of Armour Sales 1881–1928, London, 1925. James Logan The Clans of the Scottish Highlands, 2 volumes, London, 1845 Joseph Skelton Engraved Illustrations of Ancient Armour from the Collection of Sir S. R. Meyrick at Goodrich Court, Herefordshire, 2 volumes, London, 1830 O. Smith Det Kongelige Partikulpere Rustkammer I. København, 1938 Girard Thibault Academie de l’Espee, Leyden, 1628 Graf Oswald Trapp Die Churburger Rüstkammer, London, 1929 For in-print books on Military History and Arms and Armour we recommend: Ken Trotman Limited, PO Box 505, Huntingdon, PE29 2XW, England Contact Richard Brown on +44 (0) 1480 454292, fax +44 (0) 1480 384651 or email enquiries@kentrotman.com www.kentrotman.com
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2011 Antique Shows The Winter Antiques Show, which we have exhibited at since 1993, will run from Friday 21 January to Sunday 30 January. The show’s preview, with a benefit for the East Side House Settlement, will take place on Thursday 20 January (call +1 718 292 7392 for information or visit www.winterantiquesshow.com). It is held at The Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street, New York City. Following this we will be exhibiting at America’s International Fine Art & Antique Fair, which is held in Palm Beach from Saturday 5 February to Sunday 13 February. The preview will be held on Friday 4 February (for details call +1 239 949 5411 or visit www.aifaf.com). The show is held at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, 650 Okeechobee Boulevard, West Palm Beach, Florida. The European Fine Art Fair, TEFAF, will be held in Maastricht, Holland and will run from Friday 18 March to Sunday 27 March (for details call +31 411 64 50 90 or visit www.tefaf.com). The show is held at the MECC (Maastricht Exhibition & Congress Centre), Forum 100, 6229 GV Maastricht. Masterpiece London will be held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. It will run from Thursday 30 June to Tuesday 5 July. A preview will be held on Wednesday 29 June (for details call +44 20 7499 7470 or visit www.masterpiecefair.com). We then return to New York in October for The International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show, at which we have exhibited since its inception in 1989; again it is held at The Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street, New York City. The show runs from 21 October until 27 October. A Gala Benefit Evening for the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center will be held on 20th October (for details phone + 44 20 7389 6555 or visit www.haughton.com). Please do remember to carry photo ID when visiting the shows in New York as it is required for entrance to the Seventh Regiment Armory.
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