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Lot 291
A Fine French 25-Bore Flintlock Holster PistolBy Bertrand Piraube, Paris, Dated 1688
6 April 2006, 13:00 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £3,600 inc. premium
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Find your local specialistA Fine French 25-Bore Flintlock Holster Pistol
By Bertrand Piraube, Paris, Dated 1688
By Bertrand Piraube, Paris, Dated 1688
With long barrel signed 'Piraube Aux Galleries A Paris 1688' along the chiselled and foliate engraved sighting flat, silver fore-sight engraved with foliage beyond, breech with further foliate engraved sighting flat in front of a line of beadwork, border engraved tang decorated with a foliate grotesque, signed rounded lock engraved with foliage terminating in monster-heads and inhabited by a male demi-figure and a bird, cock en suite, chiselled and engraved steel, moulded finely figured Grenoble walnut full stock (fore-end repaired and partly replaced) carved with scrolling foliage on each side in front of the lock and on either side of the barrel tang, finely engraved and chiselled iron mounts (some engraving refreshed) comprising elaborately pierced foliate side-plate involving a monster-head and centred on an engraved male profile bust, shaped vacant escutcheon within partly pierced foliate border surmounted by a fleur-de-lys, foliate engraved spurred pommel with grotesque mask cap, engraved trigger-guard with foliate finial, engraved trigger-plate, turned ramrod-pipes, and later iron-capped ramrod
Footnotes
Bertrand Piraube, personal gunmaker to Louis XIV, was granted logement in the Galleries du Louvre on 25 January 1670, and held his appointment until about 1724, the year before his death. He is generally recognised as the most distinguished of the French gunmakers of the Classical Louis XIV period, and is well represented in most important royal and princely armouries








