Thread: SCAMS AND FAKES
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Old 7th January 2014, 12:19 PM   #12
Matchlock
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking
Posts: 4,310
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Hi Jasper,



I normally know what I'm talking about, and I never state facts that cannot be proven.

In as early as 1986, A.V.B. Norman, who also guided me around in the Wallace, published hic critical third volume on the Wallace A&A, European Arms & Armour Supplement, where he first tried to mention all things about their weapons that were not 'kosher' as far as the Wallace staff had learned from critical visitors like me.


Just leaf thru each item in there and look at the comments. Many fakes are uncommented because still unconcscious to them, just like A1135, the double wheellock Wender pistol dated 1554 that I posted here, with the inept lemon butt from a long pistol (ca. 80 cm) of ca. 1610, replacing the original straight grip that either terminated in a 'dagger' style or symmetrical 'fishtail' finial.
Nobody except me seems to have detected this phenomenon yet, and such is the case with many, many of their guns, swords, etc.! A great many of their seemingly 'fine' powder flasks are complete 19th c. fakes.

Next there is this vey curious, highly decorated wheellock blunderbuss (!), the long barrel with a hoizontally flattened muzzle shaped like a 'duck's bill', labeled 'late 16th c.' It is only when you realize that such muzzles had not existed before the 18th c. - and you got all the correct measurements readily in your mind - , that the scales fall from your very eyes and all of a sudden you grasp that this late-16th c. stock has been crudely mounted with the barrel of an Austrian cuirassiers blunderbuss of ca. 1760 (österreichisches Kürassiertromblon M 1759). From the outside, the bone inlay of the stock perfectly follows all the very unusual contours of the barrel. Somebody deliberately made a curiosity in the 19th century, ruining two original guns for his perverse idea!

Just one more example:
A1094, another seemingly highly decorated wheellock gun of the late 16th c.: the dog of the wheellock mechanism is an association of ca. 1680 - which is about 100 years later than the gun was actually made! The lock plate does not belong either and was cut down to fit, all the encrusting on the lock plate is 19th c. - and so on and so forth ... As I said: complete and part fakes!



Best,
m

Last edited by Matchlock; 7th January 2014 at 12:58 PM.
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