A unique bronze barrel wall gun (doppelter Doppelhaken), Nuremberg, ca. 1515-20

[Matchlock]

Another, similiar early-16th c. Nuremberg wallgun bronze/brass barrel is preserved in the George F. Harding collection, in The Art Institute of Chicago.

It seems from the photo that the pan has been removed from the right-hand side of the breech.

m

[Marcus den toom]

Incredible Michael, just came across this thread.
Any new information on these wall guns?

I found a very interesting website on hand cannons.
http://milpas.cc/rifles/ZFiles/Black...Matchlocks.htm

[Matchlock]

Hi Marcus,


And thanks for re-enlivening that old thread of mine. Yes, that's a highly important historic piece in virtually 'untouched' condition for 500 years! Imagine! Apart from the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg and the privately owned Schloss Hohenlohe-Langenburg, where I took some of the images posted in this thread, they do not exist in any German, Austrian or Swiss museum or any private collection (except mine)!

Had I new information on such items I would post it right away.


The old site on early hand cannon has one big flaw: the tiny photos that cannot be enlarged!
How can anybody possibly design a site like that??!!! Grrrrrrr ....



Best,
m

[Marcus den toom]

I found a other bronze hackbut like yours. Sold trough Sotheby's but i can't find it anywhere.

[Matchlock]

I recall this one; it was mounted on the present 'carriage' in the 19th c., the Nuremberg barrel ca. 1515-20 but heavily overcleaned.

It cannot match my unique piece in any way.


m

[Marcus den toom]

Quit right Michael, but still you have to admit that the basic form is the same

Sadly, most museums care more about making there presentations as shiny as can be, instead of teaching the folks the facts. A simple photoshop artist could have made the same shiny barrel on paper

I found another haquebut (?) matchlock gun on the web, no other pictures though.

edit: wait a second, this is yours Michael?

[Matchlock]

Yes, Marcus,


I'm extremely proud to say that this indeed is my piece!

I ordered many extra images right before the auction from Tom Del Mar and then bought it, together with the unique combined matchlock and flintlock MONTECUCCOLI musket including its original long folding bayonet from the Stauffenberg collection in Franconia/Bavaria, where it was since it was made in 1666! This makes me only the second owner of the Montecuccoli piece after 350 years - imagine!!! Both pieces are in fine, virtualy 'untouched' and patinated condition. The Montecuccoli musket M 1666 is the one with the pierced butt in the second and third images attached.

The catalog description of the short brass-alloy barrel arquebus with the earliest kind of pre-petronel cherrywood full stock (German krummer Landsknechtkolben) was completely misreading the facts that the barrel is of Maximilian Landsknecht type, most probably cast in Maximilian I's foundry of Mühlau near Innsbruck in about 1495-1500 and struck with a characteristic Late-Gothic founder's mark, The gun obviously was restocked during the South German peasant wars (Bauernkriege) of 1525, and the primitive snap-tinderlock of that Early-Renaissance period was, obsolete by long then, 'modernized' in the High-Baroque period, when everything was badly needed that would still fire: at the end of the Thirty Years War, the 1640's, by re-using an older matchlock mechanism of ca. 1580-1600. I associated an original long tiller trigger to the gun and put it on my wall. Done!

I will post these two guns in separate threads when I can take good images in spring!
Till then, the images attached will have to do.


Best,
Michael