Please Help with this maker mark on Spanish blunderbuss

Philip · 2nd November 2019, 07:00 AM

The name is Pérez, but I can find no listing for that surname in the directories of Spanish makers in the Neal and Lavin books, which admittedly are not encyclopedic as these were pioneering efforts by English-language scholars. Der Neue Stoeckel does not contain the name either (not to be confused with several entries for Peres which is Portuguese).

Your gun was likely made in the Eibar / Guipúzcoa region, in the western foothills of the Pyrenees. The lock is stylistically consistent with products from the area, which is known for production of a good number of blunderbusses well into the percussion period. Eibar, in a part of Spain known for the quality of its iron and the skill of its metalworkers, is even today the seat of Spain's sporting arms trade. It became pre-eminent after the demise of the royal patronage of Madrid gunmakers, and after successive destructions of the Ripoll arms industry by the French culminating with its utter liquidation in 1839 during the Carlist Wars.

I find something very interesting about the engraved décor of the lock. There are volutes cut into the face of the bridle or support for the hammer pivot screw, these "curlicues" terminate in shapes like the fiddleheads of fern shoots. This particular decorative element is a distinguishing hallmark of Brescian decoration, seen as early as the 17th cent. in northern Italy and it can be seen for the next century on the products of central Italian gunsmiths, as craftsmen from Brescia migrated southward through the Papal States to promote their livelihood. The interchange of design elements between Ripoll and Brescia in the 17th cent. is due not only to trans-Mediterranean trade, but also Spanish rule in Lombardy during that era.

Intriguing that this one little element, like the stalk of a fern sprouting in the forest, is still visible on a Spanish gun produced almost two centuries after those events.

2nd November 2019, 07:00 AM	#2
Philip Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: California Posts: 1,036	The name is Pérez, but I can find no listing for that surname in the directories of Spanish makers in the Neal and Lavin books, which admittedly are not encyclopedic as these were pioneering efforts by English-language scholars. Der Neue Stoeckel does not contain the name either (not to be confused with several entries for Peres which is Portuguese). Your gun was likely made in the Eibar / Guipúzcoa region, in the western foothills of the Pyrenees. The lock is stylistically consistent with products from the area, which is known for production of a good number of blunderbusses well into the percussion period. Eibar, in a part of Spain known for the quality of its iron and the skill of its metalworkers, is even today the seat of Spain's sporting arms trade. It became pre-eminent after the demise of the royal patronage of Madrid gunmakers, and after successive destructions of the Ripoll arms industry by the French culminating with its utter liquidation in 1839 during the Carlist Wars. I find something very interesting about the engraved décor of the lock. There are volutes cut into the face of the bridle or support for the hammer pivot screw, these "curlicues" terminate in shapes like the fiddleheads of fern shoots. This particular decorative element is a distinguishing hallmark of Brescian decoration, seen as early as the 17th cent. in northern Italy and it can be seen for the next century on the products of central Italian gunsmiths, as craftsmen from Brescia migrated southward through the Papal States to promote their livelihood. The interchange of design elements between Ripoll and Brescia in the 17th cent. is due not only to trans-Mediterranean trade, but also Spanish rule in Lombardy during that era. Intriguing that this one little element, like the stalk of a fern sprouting in the forest, is still visible on a Spanish gun produced almost two centuries after those events.