Pistol

Our weekly selection from salerooms.

Fine sets of pistols, preferably nicely cased, have long been the mainstay of London arms and armour sales. This season’s crop were not as plentiful nor so eagerly contested as we sometimes see, but there were some gems on offer and a selection of them are illustrated here.

In the days of the British Raj there was no shortage of would-be shikaris hoping to bag a tiger in India. At the same time plenty of London gunsmiths were ready to supply them with all the fire-power they could persuade them to buy.

From the 18th century onwards, the city of Birmingham was a major centre of the British gun-making industry.

The inscription London on the barrels of this pair of 19th century, silver-mounted flintlock pistols is entirely spurious.

Pistols remain one of the most popular of all categories among gun collectors and the winter sales in London proved a bumper season for handguns, from the earliest wheel-locks of the late 16th century to the semi-automatics which ushered in the modern age at the end of the 19th century.

The Thomas Del Mar (24% buyer’s premium) sale in London on December 5 included several excellent pairs of English pistols.

The highlight of the specialist sale of firearms and militaria held by Pook & Pook (22% buyer’s premium) in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, on November 17 was this matched pair of 18th century flintlock pistols.

The Scottish gun-making workshop of Doune in Perthshire produced pistols that were a firearm of choice for highland clansmen but were also favoured by wealthy socialites.

The National Ballistics and Intelligence Service (NABIS) has warned of a rise in defectively deactivated firearms offered at auction since the law changed this summer.

Trade associations have defended the current firearms laws in the UK amid accusations on a BBC Panorama programme of a ‘loophole’ in gun control.

Signed in gold to the 10in (25cm) damascus barrels Manton London, the best-known name among London gunsmiths, a cased pair of 25-bore flintlock duelling pistols led the specialist arms and armour sale held by Antony Cribb (22% buyer’s premium) at Abingdon on July 24.

It took a bid of €60,000 (£53,100) to secure a pair of flintlock pistols of c.1730 from the armoury of the Princes of Lobkowitz at Hermann Historica (25% buyer’s premium) in Munich in May.

The same French collection that brought the fine pair of Boutet pistols to the Thomas Del Mar Sale on December 6 also included a number of later Continental pistols that were rare and certainly unfamiliar to most British collectors.

Holt’s (25/20% buyer’s premium) sale in London on December 14 included two prime examples of weapons designed to get their owners out of a tight corner.

The latest recent arms and armour sales on both sides of the Atlantic serves only to reinforce the impression that pistols remain a huge favourite with collectors in this field.

When the US Government invited arms manufacturers to tender designs for a new standard-issue pistol for the US Army in the early 1900s the winner was Colt, with a system devised by John Moses Browning.

Top-seller at guns specialist Southams (15% buyer’s premium) in Bedford on September 20 was acased pair of flintlock double-barrelled travelling pistols.