A Very High Quality Pair of Flintlock Holster Pistols with Spanish Barrels by P. Bond. Each 14 ¾” overall, with 8 ¾” 15 bore two stage barrel turned at the muzzle and foliate gilded girdle, octagonal breech with gold lined maker's punzón of Bustindui (Neue Støckel 124) between three gold lined fleur-de-lys marks and surmounted by a gold lined cross, breech with gold line and a border of gold crosses, top flat inlayed in gold ‘ERRADURAS’. Foliate engraved tang, flat stepped, bolted and bevelled lock plates, military trophy engraved tail, signed ‘P. Bond’. Swan necked cocks engraved with trophy of arm, semi water proof pans, rollers on the frizzen springs. Vents gold lined. Set triggers, spur trigger guards engraved with a trophy of arms on the bow with pineapple finials. Finely figured walnut full stocks with finely chequered butts, silver vacant oval escutcheons, silver barrel slide escutcheons. Double collar ramrod pipes & under barrel horn tipped ramrods, one with worm tip.
Circa 1810.
Pistols of the highest quality in very good condition, barrels with some original blue, locks and mounts with nearly all their original finish.
Erraduras, Herrduras or Du Herraduras on a gun barrel literally means ‘horseshoes’, it had been discovered by Nicolas Bis gunmaker to King Carlos II, that horseshoes from the Biscay region made the finest gun barrels needing 55 lbs of horseshoes to make one gun barrel, by the mid eighteenth century Spanish gun barrels were without peer.
Philip J J Bond, Son of Edward, apprenticed to Thomas Tringham 1774; free of Goldsmiths Co., 1871. Gunmaker and Sword Cutler, 45 Cornhill, 1794-1816; 59 Lombard Street., 1794-1803. Viewer to Hudson’s Bay Co., 1790-1815. Died 1816.
Juan Esteban Bustindui one of the very best Spanish barrel smiths is recorded in Eibar between c.1780 and 1820.
LITERATURE W. Keith Neal, Spanish Guns and Pistols, page 81and 94, plates 57, 61 and 69.