A Pair of Queen Anne Flintlock Box Lock Travelling Pistols by I Collis, Oxford. 10” overall, 4” turn off 54 bore ring turned cannon barrels signed ‘Collis and Oxford’, border engraved actions, border engraved ring neck cocks & steels. Tower Private Proofs, one pistol numbered ‘1’. Sliding trigger guard safety catches each engraved with a flower head on the ball & figured flat sided butts each inlaid with silver wire and rocailles on both sides. Scrollwork down the wrist, silver escutcheons engraved with owner's crest of a Griffon.
Circa 1785
Pistols by a very good provincial maker in very good uncleaned condition, very minor losses to silver wire.
Collis was apprenticed to William Emms and completed his apprenticeship with him the same year that Emms died, 1764. John Collis was a gunmaker on his own between at least 1782-1798. According to Evans & Godwin, when Collis passed away in 1801, he was the last in a long line of high quality Oxford gunsmiths that were making their own guns, not simply doing repair work or selling guns others had made.