AN 11-BORE BAVARIAN PRINCELY FLINTLOCK FOWLING-PIECE BY PIERRE FROMENT. A. ERLANGEN- NEUSTADT, CIRCA 1710
with sighted barrel tapering to a very lightly swamped muzzle, formed with flattened sides at the rear, a full-length sighting flat interrupted towards the breech by a scroll finely chiselled in low relief, the short rear section of the flat and the tang each finely engraved, the former decorated with the figure of a sportsman in contemporary dress after Claude Simonin and the latter decorated with flower, bevelled lock signed "Froment. a. Erlang", engraved with scrolling foliage and cut with vertical flutes at the rear, the cock engraved en suite and the head of the retaining screw chiselled as a grotesque mask (the steel missing), carved moulded figured walnut full stock originally inlaid with silver wire scrolls and small silver plaques about the barrel tang and ramrod-pipe (fore-end cracked towards the muzzle, the inlay missing), full iron mounts chiselled in low relief, comprising butt-plate decorated with a serpentine monster over the tang and with a scrollwork design involving a pair of serpents and a demon mask, the side-plate pierced with scrolling leafy tendrils issuant from a demon mask and involving small grotesques and monsters' heads, the trigger-guard also cut with a demon mask and with pierced scrollwork finials, four baluster-shaped ramrod-pipes, the rear finial cut with a mask and pierced scrollwork en suite with the trigger-guard, silver escutcheon engraved with the owner's coat-of-arms surmounted by a crown of a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and retaining its original iron-capped wooden ramrod
118.2 cm; 46½ in barrel

The arms are those of Oettingen-Oettingen, created Princes of The Holy Roman Empire in 1674. The house of Oettingen-Oettingen became extinct at the death of Prince Albert Ernst II in 1731 (born 1683); thereupon the Princely line was inherited by the house of Oettingen-Wallerstein.

Pierre Froment (1690-1752) and his father Charles (1657-1722), also a gunmaker, were Huguenot immigrants from Sedan in the Ardennes. They were part of a large Huguenot settlement in the Bavarian city of Erlangen-Neustadt following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.