A Very Fine & Rare Cased Pair of Silver Mounted Flintlock Duelling Pistols by Wogdon. 14 ¾” overall, 9 ½” with 16 sided 29 bore sighted barrel, each signed ‘Wogdon London’ along the sighting flat at the breech & with a transverse band of beadwork at the rear, silver fore sights & gold lined touch holes, with London Proofs & ‘RW’ stamp on underside. Tangs finely engraved with foliage, also each with a band of beadwork & incorporating the back sight, flat bevelled bolted stepped detented locks signed on a gold oval suspended from engraved swags each engraved with a rocaille on the stepped tail. Engraved cocks & steels, the last with small roller, figured full stocks with rounded flat sided butts, cast & chased mounts comprising pierced foliate side plates each incorporating a Classical helmet & a falchion. Butt caps with the seated figure of Britannia framed by rocailles & foliage, border engraved trigger guards each with acorn finial & decorated with a flower head on the bow, turned silver ramrod pipes, set triggers & original horn tipped ramrods, one with iron worm, the other with Wogdon’s powder measure. In their original mahogany case with some original accessories including leather bottle shaped powder flask, bullet mould & loading rod, corner box with jag & bullet extractor. The exterior of the lid with Chippendale brass carrying handle.
Hall marked for 1782. Silver mounts by Micheal Barnett (earliest known Wogdon with his mark)
Best quality pistols in very good condition, one trigger guard bow replaced with a Charles Freeth HM one, a working life repair. Only one other pair of 16 sided barrel Wogdons are known.
Robert Wogdon was apprenticed to Edward Newton of Grantham, Lincolnshire in 1748. He is recorded as 'Gunmaker, at Mr. Maw's Haberdasher, Cockspur St., Charing Cross' in 1764. He carried on his business in Haymarket from 1774 until his retirement in 1802. From 1795 he was in partnership with John Barton who carried on the business following Wogdon's retirement.
Pistols illustrated in John O'Sullivan & De Witt Bailey, ‘Robert Wogdon & Barton, John Barton, London Gunmakers 1764-1819’, 2019, page 152.