LONDON SILVER HALLMARKS FOR 1758, MAKER’S MARKS OF JOHN ALLEN

with bright two-stage barrels each with turned and chiselled girdle and joined on the upper side only by a flat tapering rib engraved with running foliate scrolls between the breech sections and either side of the silver fore-sight, octagonal breech sections signed in gold script, each engraved at the front with scrolls and stamped at the rear with the maker’s two gold-lined marks in the Spanish style within engraved rocailles and scrollwork, and struck with London proof marks and Foreigner’s mark, border engraved tang with cross-hatched sighting groove and finely decorated with rocailles and foliage, gold-lined touch-holes, flat bevelled locks each retained by two side-nails, signed in script, and with stepped tail (one cock associated, left steel reduced), finely figured half-stock carved in low relief with a scallop shell and motifs around the barrel tang, the butt with acute fall and cast-off (filled split at the toe), border engraved mounts comprising butt-plate cast and chased with a scallop shell and foliage on the tang and engraved with a trophy involving a cornucopia and a bird, trigger-guard with foliate finial and decorated with rocailles and foliage on the bow, the grip inlaid with a basket of flowers in silver sheet and wire instead of an escutcheon, foliate engraved broad fore-end cap also forming the ramrod entry, turned ramrod-pipes, and later horn-tipped ramrod, 84.4 cm barrels

Provenance

Probably from the gunroom of the Earls of Eglington, Eglington Castle, Ayrshire, and sold by Dowell’s of Edinburgh, 1-5 December 1925

Anon. sale Christie’s London, Antique Arms and Armour, 20 October 1982, lot 154 (£2,592 including premium)

D.H.L. Back Collection

Bonhams Knightsbridge, Fine Antique Arms and Armour Including the D.H.L. Back Collection, 24 November 2010, lot 422

Literature

David Back, ‘The Use of Double Barrel Guns in the Eighteenth Century’, The Fifth Park Lane Arms Fair Catalogue, 1988, p. 8, pl. 4

W. Keith Neal and D.H.L. Back, Messrs Griffin & Tow and W. Bailes, 1989, pp. 136-137, pls. 74 a-d

William Bailes (circa 1700-1766) was at Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London from 1748 until his death. He is credited by Thomas Frankland (in Cautions to Young Sportsmen) with the invention of the under-rib.

For John Allen see footnote to lot 100.