A Good and Rare Austrian Combined Wheellock and Matchlock Musket, ca. 1665-70

[Matchlock]

Hi 'Nando,

I'm afriad he won't deaccession it ...

Anyhow, here is another piece in a private collection.

Best,
Michl

[Matchlock]

A great number of these, maybe as many as 100 samples (!), the specimen in my collection and this here in discussion included, were sold illegally from the reserve collection of the fortress Hohensalzburg, Austria, in 1988, together with a tremendous number of other early weapons and accouterments. The then director was of course involved and shot himself in his bureau a few years later when the scandal came up.
I bought my sample from a German dealer in April 1988.

All the Salzburg pieces had drilled buttstocks, where they were brutally fixed to the exhibition walls by screws in the 1880's. I have seen old b/w photographs in the hallway of the administration there - museums! You can still see the hole in the buttstock of the specimen dicussed here.

Telling by the shape of its beechwood buttstock, with all varnish and patina washed off with lye, which hardly shows any 'bellied' form any longer, it should be dated to the late 17th c., ca. 1680-90, thus being one of the latest of its type ever made. The overall length was standardized to 151 cm, the bore 19 mm, the weight ca. 6.5 kg. Almost all these guns are of German (Suhl) production, and so is this one; I have only seen two or three of that type with barrel marks of Zella (near Suhl, Thuringia).

The matchlock serpentine makes two facts evident: that the spring is loose or broken (its socket, which I can identify on the print, was just put into the lock plate, mostly without riveting), and that the match holder does not belong to this gun originally because it is bent too little in order to reach the ignition pan with its jaws.

The image I scanned from the Fischer, Lucerne, catalog of June 29, 1990, lot 8605; it was at that time when these combination-lock muskets were offered by literally all the dealers and nearly in every auction sale as they had come in such large numbers. They are almost as rare to find nowadays as they were before the Salzburg story took place.
BTW, just another of those stories that make collecting weapons so spicy ...

Another Salzburg combined wheellock and matchlock musket, with the hole in its butt badly closed, I showed in post #4 above.

My two long Austrian pikes that I mounted crossed-over beneath the ceiling of my weapons room, 4.60 m and 4.70 m long repectively and retaining their original blued iron spikes and long straps, as well as their original ash hafts, also were deaccessioned from the fortress Hohensalzburg, and there were hundreds of them!!! I bought mine at Christie's London-South Kensington auction, when I was there on September 19, 1990.


Best,
Michael

[Fernando K]

Matchlock Estimate:

Question from ignorance. The trigger moves the two systems simultaneously, or either of them first? in any case, the clamp after the wick prevents pyrites and reverse acting. I see a single trigger ....

Affectionately. Fernando K

[Matchlock]

Hi Fernando,


First of all: there is no such thing as ignorance here, just studying together!

There is no clamp preventing the match holder from acting. Actually, when pulled, the trigger will simultaneously release both the wheel and at the same time cause the match holder (serpentine) with the matchcord (wick) to move a bit. In order to move the matchcord back to the ignition pan however, you would have to pull the trigger back all the way and hold it for longer than a second. To release the wheel, on the other hand, the tiniest touch of the trigger is sufficient. As long as the matchcord is not alight it is not harmful anyway.
Thus, both systems perfectly work via one and the same trigger.


Best,
Michael

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Fernando K

... Matchlock Estimate ...

I am sure the translating machine is playing tricks again.
Fernando wishes to express: Esteemed Matchlock (Michael)

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Matchlock

... The then director was of course involved and shot himself in his bureau a few years later when the scandal came up ....

If he at least used an early wheellock example, to make it a honorable gesture

[Matchlock]

A detached early matchlock mechanism would do for me, 'Nando!

m

[Matchlock]

My Salzburg pikes at Christie's exhibition rooms on September 19, 1990 (#2 and 3 from top).

m

[fernando]

It's good they're back home safe

[Matchlock]

Well, actually they are now about 150 km north of where they used to be for more than four hundreds of years; they are extremely early, mid-16th c. (!), and were shortened by about 1 m during the Thirty Years War when they were already 70 or 80 years old.
They remained unsold while the auction ran; immediately afterwards I spoke to Christie's and they told me that probably the stabiliziation for shipment and the transport itself of the almost 5 m long pikes would be the real expense factor. At first I had been planning on buying just one of them but how could I display one single pike in my collection when originally they came in mere masses and their squares dominated the battlegrounds for at least 300 years? Then Christie's offered me two for the price of one so the thought immediately jumped to my mind that two of them would in a way stabilize each other and also make a much better display.

To cut a long story short: I ordered them to be stabilized by one long beam 6 on 6 cm, bound between them, and just wrap them thickly with bubbles. It worked out perfectly. The air freight from London to Nuremberg airport, the customs import tax (on both the pikes and the air freight) and the special taxi transport to Regensburg, where I lived then, summed up to double the price that they charged me in London though. There was a third at Christie's, the tip of the pike of different shape; today I feel like I should have bought that one as well ...


Anyway, just one aspect of adventures in a collector's life.
They have been with me for 23 years now and I have only seen a handful of those with their irons still retaining their original bluing - the ones in Salzburg, and a few of those exhibited at the Basel Historic Museum, Switzerland (images attached, suspended hovering high above the famous Basel bronze cannon barrel Drach/Dragon), dated 1514, length 4.93 m.



Best,
Michl