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Caspar Spät, Munich, c. 1650

Length 21.5 in (54.6 cm), barrels 13.75 in (35 cm), calibre 0.50 in.

The barrels, locks and mounts of iron chiselled with decoration in high relief, blued against a gilt ground and involving trophies, scrollwork and Classical warriors, the cocks chiselled as monsters' heads. The locks depict respectively one of two successive stages in a combat. The fruitwood stocks - which are probably by Elias Becker the Elder of Augsburg - are inlaid with ivory scrollwork.

These are splendid - and hitherto unpublished - products of the famous Munich School, the collective name now applied to the steel-chisellers who successively ran the Bavarian Court workshop where some of the most magnificent firearms, swords, daggers and accessories ever made were produced. It was run first by Emanuel Sadeler of Antwerp, from 1594 until his death in 1610, when he was succeeded by his younger brother Daniel, who had previously worked for the Emperor Rudolph II in Prague. On his death in c. 1632, he was replaced by Caspar Spät who did not die until 1691, though he had probably given up the workshop some time before. The Boughton pistols are very close in style to a pair in the Armeria Reale, Turin, belonging to a set of arms by Spät which were presented to Duke Carlo Emanuele of Savoy in 1650 by the Elector Maximilian I of Bavaria. They are presumably the 'pair of fine inlaid wroh [?wroughte] pistols with wheel locks' listed in 1746, MHW2. Nothing is known of their previous history.