A Very Fine Cased Pair of Percussion Pocket Pistols by Joseph Egg with Silver & Gold Mounts. 7” overall, 2 ¼” turn-off 40 bore browned twist sighted barrels each engraved with a band of foliage at the muzzle, actions each signed 'J. EGG LONDON' on a ribbon & finely engraved with scrollwork inhabited by birds and serpents, offset scroll engraved hammers, concealed screws, folding triggers. Well figured chequered walnut butts, silver escutcheons, silver pommels each with short spurs & engraved with foliage & scrollwork, the base of each pommel set with a large gold escutcheon engraved with crest & moto ‘Martis non Cupidinis’ (Belonging to Mars, not Cupid], of the Fletcher family. In their original fitted mahogany case lined in dark green baize with original accessories including red leather covered three-way flask, bullet mould, barrel key, turnscrew, case key & loading rod, the lid with trade label of Joseph Egg.
Circa 1825-30
Fine pistols in very good condition.
Sir Henry Fletcher, 3rd Baronet (Baronetcy, of Clea Hall in the County of Cumberland born 1807 died 1851.
Joseph Egg was at 1 Piccadilly (corner of Piccadilly and Haymarket) from 1814 to 1834, and as Joseph & Sons and Joseph & Co. at the same address between 1835 and 1841. Egg claimed to have invented the copper cap as did several other gunmakers, it was introduced shortly before 1820. See Claude Blair, 'The Egg Family, Part 1 and Part 1 (contd.)', Journal of the Arms & Armour Society, Vol. VII (1973), pp. 266-299 and 306-353