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拍品专文
This brace of coral-inlaid pistols forms part of a small group of flintlock firearms decorated in this manner. They survive primarily in royal and aristocratic European collections, including a pair presented to the future King George IV by the Dey of Algiers on 25 February 1811, now in the Royal Collection Trust, Windsor (RCIN 62424, published Niels Arthur Andersen, Gold and Coral. Presentation Arms from Algiers and Tunis, Denmark, 2014, pp.104-05, no.CH2077), a set of firearms presented to the same monarch on a second occasion on 20 May 1819, and a pair of pistols owned by the 4th Marquess of Hertford by 1865 (Wallace Collection, London, OA2041 and OA2042; Thom Richardson and Paula Turner (eds.), The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Arms & Armour from Asia, Africa and the Ottoman World, London, 2026, p.436).
The precise circumstances of their manufacture are complicated by the proof mark of Saint Étienne on one of the firearms gifted in 1819 and the attribution of the barrels on the Hertford pair to France, apparently arguing against manufacture in the Islamic world. David Alexander posited the Italian port city of Livorno as a possible attribution based on textual accounts and the presence of a thriving coral industry (David Alexander, Islamic Arms and Armor in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Haven, 2015, p.268). Furthermore, while the two gifts to George IV by the Dey of Algiers appear to point to manufacture in Algeria, the fact that they are dated AH 1153 / 1740-1 AD and AH 1159 / 1746-7 AD, well before they were gifted to George IV, leaves open the possibility that they were imported to Algeria at an earlier date. Nevertheless, Algiers’ own coral industry and the fact that the inscription ‘work of Mustafa’ appears on the locks of firearms gifted to George IV on both occasions, means Ottoman Algeria is the most likely attribution for the stocks and locks on these sumptuous pistols, a conclusion ultimately supported by Alexander (Alexander, op.cit., p.268).
A brace of pistols remarkably similar to the present pair was formerly in the collection of George Cameron Stone and are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (36.25.2246a, b; Alexander 2015, pp. 268-70), while further examples are in the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait (Robert Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World in the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait, London/New York, 1995, pp.75, 78), and the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (V.O. 274; E.G. Astvatsaturian, Turestkoe oruzhie v sobranii Gosudarstvennogo istoricheskogo muzeia, Moscow, 2002, p.278).
The precise circumstances of their manufacture are complicated by the proof mark of Saint Étienne on one of the firearms gifted in 1819 and the attribution of the barrels on the Hertford pair to France, apparently arguing against manufacture in the Islamic world. David Alexander posited the Italian port city of Livorno as a possible attribution based on textual accounts and the presence of a thriving coral industry (David Alexander, Islamic Arms and Armor in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Haven, 2015, p.268). Furthermore, while the two gifts to George IV by the Dey of Algiers appear to point to manufacture in Algeria, the fact that they are dated AH 1153 / 1740-1 AD and AH 1159 / 1746-7 AD, well before they were gifted to George IV, leaves open the possibility that they were imported to Algeria at an earlier date. Nevertheless, Algiers’ own coral industry and the fact that the inscription ‘work of Mustafa’ appears on the locks of firearms gifted to George IV on both occasions, means Ottoman Algeria is the most likely attribution for the stocks and locks on these sumptuous pistols, a conclusion ultimately supported by Alexander (Alexander, op.cit., p.268).
A brace of pistols remarkably similar to the present pair was formerly in the collection of George Cameron Stone and are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (36.25.2246a, b; Alexander 2015, pp. 268-70), while further examples are in the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait (Robert Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World in the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait, London/New York, 1995, pp.75, 78), and the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (V.O. 274; E.G. Astvatsaturian, Turestkoe oruzhie v sobranii Gosudarstvennogo istoricheskogo muzeia, Moscow, 2002, p.278).