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A Very Rare 54-Bore Flintlock Rifled Breech-Loading Repeating Magazine Pistol On The Lorenzoni Principle image 1
A Very Rare 54-Bore Flintlock Rifled Breech-Loading Repeating Magazine Pistol On The Lorenzoni Principle image 2
A Very Rare 54-Bore Flintlock Rifled Breech-Loading Repeating Magazine Pistol On The Lorenzoni Principle image 3
A Very Rare 54-Bore Flintlock Rifled Breech-Loading Repeating Magazine Pistol On The Lorenzoni Principle image 4
Lot 322

A Very Rare 54-Bore Flintlock Rifled Breech-Loading Repeating Magazine Pistol On The Lorenzoni Principle
By Grice, London, Indistinct Birmingham Silver Hallmarks, Maker's Mark Of William Grice, Circa 1780

Antique Arms and Armour
24 November 2021, 10:30 GMT
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £24,000 inc. premium

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A Very Rare 54-Bore Flintlock Rifled Breech-Loading Repeating Magazine Pistol On The Lorenzoni Principle
By Grice, London, Indistinct Birmingham Silver Hallmarks, Maker's Mark Of William Grice, Circa 1780

With three-stage cannon barrel turned at the muzzle and rifled with eight spiral grooves, octagonal breech with fluted girdle, engraved 'LONDON' on a foliate scroll along the top flat and with a band of beadwork at the rear, border engraved rounded action and bevelled back-action lock, the former finely decorated with rocailles and foliage, and with a basket of flowers forward of the grooved gas-escape, the latter signed on a foliated scroll, later crude cock automatically cocked via a flat bar on the inside engaging with the circular brass breech-block and operated by the curved side-lever with button terminal, hinged priming magazine cover with spring catch and engraved with a flower (steel-spring missing), hinged border engraved magazine cover for balls on the left decorated en suite with the action and with sprung button catch, steel trigger-guard engraved with a foliate rocaille on the bow, figured swelling rounded butt profusely inlaid with fine symmetrical silver wire scrollwork and engraved silver flower-heads issuing from a basket above a silver wire oval, and involving a rocaille on each side, cast and chased silver lion and rampart butt-cap within a border of rocailles, and in fine condition
11.5 cm. barrel

Footnotes

The maker is William Grice (1766-90) recorded working at 5 Sand Street, Birmingham between 1774 and 1781 following which date he was in partnership with Joseph Grice (1782-1797) at the same address. He died on 25 July 1790. It is most unusual to find a gunsmith with a registered silver mark as a small worker

For an unsigned example, Birmingham hallmarked for 1785, see The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Early Firearms of Great Britain and Ireland from the Collection of Clay P. Bedford, 1971, pp. 122 and 125, no. 129. See also a related rifle formerly in the W. Keith Neal Collection and sold in these Rooms, Antique Arms and Armour, 4 April 2007, lot 371

Although the breech-loading magazine system employed is usually termed the 'Lorenzoni System' after the Florentine gunmaker Michele Lorenzoni, it is not certain to which European gunmaker the credit for its invention should be given. A much quoted reference to the system in the diaries of Samuel Pepys dates back to 1662. On 3 July he refers to a 'gun to discharge seven times, the best of all devices I ever saw, and very serviceable, and not a bauble, for it is much approved of, and many made thereof'. Despite this eulogy the incidence of explosion in the powder magazines probably explains the great rarity of such firearms today

Additional information

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