Earliest Arquebusier's and Musketeer's Trapezoidal Powder Flasks, ca. 1530-1590

[Matchlock]

Textile-covered trapezoidal powder and small priming flasks, ca. 1540-60, showing North Italian stylistic influence; in the Graz arsenal.

The cloth was reused from Gothic chasubles.

Please cf. the illustration by Stradanus posted above which exactly depicts this type of flasks.

The scan at the bottom depicts various types represented in Graz; from left: Nuremberg, from deliveries of 1577-78; the others: cloth-covered, in North Italian style, ca. 1540-60, including a small priming flask.
Please note that the larger flasks all retain their original nozzle cap attached to the horizontal cut-off by a delicate chain; this cap is missing from almost all surviving flasks.
An alternative but more elaborate and expensive way of covering the nozzle was a spring-loaded and lever-acted, laterally mounted cover, which however is very rare to find.

In the foreground: a curved caliverman's flask of bleeched and engraved cowhorn, Nuremberg, dated 1606; the bottom mount missing.

Author's photos.


For caliverman's flasks, ca. 1580-1620, please see:

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...liverman+flask

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ght=bandoliers


m

[Matchlock]

Remarkable samples in Schloss Konopiste, Czechia, the Castle of the d'Este family of Ferrara.

In North Italian style, ca. 1560-80, the wooden bodies painted red and black.
Author's photos.

[Matchlock]

Ca. 1560-80.

The body of some painted red, some decorated with the Maltese Cross and with pierced decorative mounts.

The smaller ones are of course priming flasks.


m

[Matchlock]

A small priming flask, the nozzle with rare spring-loaded cover, ca. 1580.

Schloss Burgk, Thuringia.
Author's photos.

m

[Matchlock]

A third instance of one of the first and rarest type of trapezoidal powder flasks, combined with a leather pouch, and from the same series as the ones in post #2, ca. 1540, is preserved in the Polish Army Musem Warsaw, incorrectly dated '2nd half 17th c.'

m

[Matchlock]

Three samples of surviving small trapezoidal priming flasks of earliest type, ca. 1540:

- Munich Armory Stadtmuseum), one piece only, seen amidst others of later type of ca. 1560-80 (color attachments)

- French private collection(s): Robert Marquisset/Jean-Pierre Yven, Poires à poudre, 1990, nos. 36 & 37 (b/w attachments)
m

[Matchlock]

Saxon trapezoidal powder flasks with leather pouch, 1560's, the iron mounts blued, and retaining their original leather suspension strings with wooden beads on the draw-strings;
please note the archaic form of the serpent-shaped vertical cut-off:

Castle Museum Schwerin, Germany (top) and Wallace Colln., London (center);

and a rare variant of drop-like shape: Castle Museum, Schwerin (bottom.

Proveance: The Saxon Royal Collections.

Schwerin items: author's photos.


Further samples of both types: author's collection.


m