Arquebuse de chasse à rouet, Allemagne ou... - Lot 144 - Pierre Bergé & Associés

Arquebuse de chasse à rouet, Allemagne ou Silésie vers 1640. A wheel-lock sporting rifle, German or Silesian, circa 1640. With swamped octagonal sighted barrel rifled with eight grooves and decorated with bands of flowers and scrollwork punched and engraved over the breech, over the muzzle and at the median, flat lock, the borders en suite with the barrel, fitted with external wheel retained by a chamfered bracket, sliding pan-cover with rosette stud release, and the dog pierced and engraved with a monster and a human bust, fruitwood full stock inlaid over its length with a complex series of engraved horn and mother-of-pearl plaques on a ground of close-set scrolling tendrils, ball-flowers and pellets, arranged within inlaid horn lines and including exotic birds, game animals, monsters, and human figures, a huntsman clubbing a deer opposite the lock, the cheek-piece decorated with a vacant oval supported by grotesque musicians, and inlaid with a pair of mother-of-pearl female busts about the breech tang, fitted with sliding patch-box cover en suite with the stock, engraved horn ramrod-pipes, horn fore-end cap, horn butt-plate, set trigger, iron trigger-guard, and horn-tipped wooden ramrod. L. overall: 106 cm - L. barrel: 73.6 cm.