A Rare Bavarian 54-Bore Small Wheel-Lock Pistol
282
A Rare Bavarian 54-Bore Small Wheel-Lock Pistol
Circa 1650, Almost Certainly By Georg Gsell Of Arzberg
With slightly swamped octagonal barrel retaining traces of punched decoration at the breech, plain tang, bevelled lock sparsely engraved with flowers and foliage and with an expanded flower-head on the wheel, hand-operated pan-cover, fruitwood full stock (chipped below the lock) incised with panels of foliage (originally darkened) heightened with brass nails and with central bone pellet on each side of the pommel, iron mounts including slightly domed oval pommel finely punched with flowers and foliage, iron ramrod-pipe and fore-end cap, and iron-tipped ramrod
17 cm. barrel
Sold for £5,000 inc. premium

Footnotes

  • Der Neue Støckel records some seven gunmakers of the Gsell family working in Arzberg around the middle of the seventeenth century, but the decoration on the stock of the present pistol is very similar to that on a wheel-lock rifle signed by Georg Gsell and dated 1649 in the Imperial Armoury in Vienna (inv. no. D. 291)

    A pair of similar but even smaller Gsell pistols were in the collection of Dr. Jack Strassman, offered at Christie's East, New York on 21 May 1986, lot 365

Category: Arms and Armour

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