25
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.