[Raf]

[ it cannot be a forgery, as this requires an original, which never existed. But the fact that a gunsmith would use time and valuable materials to create something that never existed is more than puzzling.[/QUOTE]

That was my point. Good forgers sometimes succeed by making things for which there is no direct president. A nineteenth collector might have questioned why European matchlock pistols are never seen so would have been delighted to find this rare example. It reminds me of the dubious inaccurate engravings one sees in nineteenth century histories from which it may well have been copied. Objects from any period have a kind of handwriting which is usually the give away to when they were produced. Victorian collectors valued historical weapons as works of art and had little interest in plain functional examples hence forgeries emphasise the decorative and exotic. A good example is the writhen sword recently discussed. Also nineteenth century collectors did not have access to the information we have today so more likely to be taken in by fantasy pieces that today we would see as implausible . To return to Van Meegeren after his forgeries were unmasked people asked why was it that nobody had noticed that the facial architypes in his paintings looked remarkably like pre war film stars.