A FINE PAIR OF LIÈGE FLINTLOCK HOLSTER PISTOLS BY PHILIPPE SELIER, CIRCA 1720
with lightly swamped barrels signed on the sighting flats, the breeches with chiselled decorative raised mouldings engraved with scrolls and with twin vents lined in brass, with engraved bands of leaf ornament enclosing the fore-sights and also decorating the breeches and muzzles, signed bevelled locks cut with vertical flutes at the rear, finely engraved with bands of leaf ornament abutting the linear borders and each retaining some original bright blued finish, carved moulded rootwood full stocks, full brass mounts cast in low relief and retaining much of their original gilding, comprising spurred pommels with grotesque mask caps fitted within a relief enclosure of scrolls and finely engraved en suite with the barrels and locks, scrollwork side-plates carrying an oval and pierced with foliage and a monster's head at the rear, bevelled trigger-guards each with moulded acanthus spray finial, faceted baluster-shaped ramrod-pipes, and cartouche-shaped escutcheons involving a coronet, fitted with horn fore-end caps, and one pistol retaining its original ramrod (one steel and one ramrod missing, one fore-end cracked towards the muzzle)
54 cm; 21¼ in
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