View Single Post
Old 29th May 2014, 08:08 AM   #18
Matchlock
(deceased)
 
Matchlock's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking
Posts: 4,310
Default

Hi Raf,


Fully agreed, basically.
In any expert analysis, we can but rely on facts generally known.
In other words:
The sky's the limit; all bets are off ...

It's just that I used to own two Indian matchlock muskets, a wall gun and two detached matchlock barrels about four decades ago, all of them preserved in fine original condition, and the barrels struck with a long row of an inventory no. from the Rajpur arsenal each.
Moreover, I have seen a number of those items at various auction viewings.

So please trust my being quite familiar with every little detail of those barrels, their peculiar form actually imitating the characteristic Nuremberg style of about 1510-20 - apart from the pan which, unlike the pans of early 16th c. German barrels, usually shows no provision for a pivoted cover on about 90 per cent of average arsenal quality Indian matchlock barrels.
The swiveling pan cover is a feature most often observed with finely made decorated specimens rarely ever emerging on the market. I remember noticing two or three of them in London sales catalogues, over quite a few years. When they are fitted with a swiveling pan cover belonging originally the latter is sometimes made of brass, again copying some German barrels of ca. 1525-30.

What is more, and definitely contrasting with their German paragons: Indian barrels are usually not sighted while German barrels usually feature both a rear sight and foresight, from about the 1470's:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...barrels+dating

The presence, position and shape of sights are further important dating criteria for barrels. They first appeared around the mid-15th c. starting with a raised rear fire shield behind the touch hole on top of iron barrels, incised with a small central slot for aiming (attachments). At about the same period there was just a very subtle small raised portion of the swamped muzzle that acted as the first preliminary stage of a foresight. On my earliest Nuremberg/Passau barrel of the 1460's, a very rare instance of a hog's back barrel (German: Schweinsrückenlauf), an edge instead on top of an octagonal barrel fulfills the function of both sights over all its length. My next-in-line Passau barrel, bearing the earliest known city mark of Munich according to Erasmus Grasser's design of 1477, together with the date 1481, is the second-oldest known dated handgun barrel in the world:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showt...t+dated+handgun



In the case of 'your' barrel, the tang, pan and cover (the finial of the latter imitating the German style of the 1630's), as well as the lug(s), all are spurious additions. Somebody obviously intended some gun to appear like an original German 'military' musket of Thirty Years type - at least to the inexperienced eye.

Attachments:
Author's photographs from the year 2000, picturing two different Nuremberg manufactured tinderlock arquebuses of ca. 1525-30, retaining their original brass pan covers; they once were part of the inventory of the former Pilsen arsenal, and are now preseved in the Západočeské muzeum v Plzni, in Pilsen, Czechia.
All of these guns, and there are still more than 200 of them!, probably never left Pilsen since they were delivered from Nuremberg workshops, almost 500 years ago ...
The bottommost image portraits the museum's curator,
Dr. František Fryda, kindly holding the original ramrod of an arquebus for me to take close-ups of the engraved finial made of either staghorn or bone.

Best,
Michael
Attached Images
    

Last edited by Matchlock; 29th May 2014 at 10:05 AM.
Matchlock is offline   Reply With Quote