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Lot 218

A Pair Of Liège 20-Bore All-Metal Flintlock Box-Lock Pistols In The So-Called 'Queen Anne' Style
By Laurent Lecomte A Liège, Circa 1750

25 July 2012, 10:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £3,750 inc. premium

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A Pair Of Liège 20-Bore All-Metal Flintlock Box-Lock Pistols In The So-Called 'Queen Anne' Style
By Laurent Lecomte A Liège, Circa 1750

With fixed iron cannon barrels and lightly engraved actions of one piece, the former engraved with bands of stylised foliage and each with pronounced stepped muzzle-ring, the breeches signed below the steel-springs, hollow bulbous brass butts each engraved with strapwork and foliage behind the simulated barrel tang and with a coat-of-arms with coronet above within manteling surmounted by a cross and coronet, sliding iron trigger-guard safety-catches, brass ramrod-pipes, the rear pipe with sprung retaining catch, and iron ramrods (one ramrod and one top jaw and screw each expertly replaced, some light wear and surface pitting) (2)
25 cm. barrels

Footnotes

Provenance:
Bonhams Knightsbridge, Fine Antique Arms and Armour from the Henk L. Visser Collection, 28 November 2007, lot 328

Literature:
G. de Vries and B.J. Martens, The Visser Collection, 2007, vol. I, part 4, cat. no. 890, pp. 476-477

Very similar pistols were made by Claude Niquet and Henri Devillers, as well as by P. Thirion of Amsterdam - for the last, see Hartmans' Dutch Gunmakers ..., 2006, p. 36

One of the finest pairs of this type (with silver butts) is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no. M. 196-1951). The maker is Devillers and the pistols bear the arms of the Counts Bethlen de Bethlen - see J.F. Hayward, European Firearms, 1969, No. 77, pp. 55-56, pl. XXXI (top)

Laurent Lecomte appears to have been active in Liège from c. 1720 to 1760

Additional information

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