A very fine duelling pistol by Wallis of Hull.
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15” overall. 9 1/2” octagonal barrels in 20 bore, signed in gold oval ‘Wallis Hull’. Hook breech with gold line, blade foresight and rearsight. Step Lock border engraved with floral scrolls, swan cock florally engraved, frizzens border engraved , waterproof pan, roller on toe of frizzen. Steel trigger guards engraved with trophy of arms and double urns finial.. Half stocked with horn fore-end, hockey stick butt with steel butt cap and horn tipped ramrod with worm.
Circa 1800
In very good condition with most original brown finish.
George Wallis One of the very best provincial gunmakers, shop in Mytongate Hull circa 1775 to 1803 .
George Wallis, "Celebrated Antiquary & Gunsmith", established a museum at his Mytongate premises by 1794, displaying not only weapons but also 'medals, coins, ores, petrefactions etc.'. The Weapons included the Brunswick all-steel wheel-lock pistol shown in the portrait, and a sixteenth-century hunting sword which belonged to King Henry VIII. Wallis is also well-known for the work he carried out for William Constable of Burton Constable Hall.
For further information and for a very similar pistol in the Newarke House Museum, Leicester (Acc. No. 383. 1952), see A.G. Credland, 'Wallis of Hull', J.A.A.S, vol. IX, no. 4 (December 1978), pp. 133-181, pl. XLVI