Day 148 - London pistols




April 23, 2019

I wasn't looking forward to today's visit, since I knew that Gallery 380 is home to a special exhibition on London arms-making in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and I expected to be bored. (I might note that the gallery also houses  display cases containing Colt and Winchester revolvers that were made in Springfield, MA and New Haven - a reminder that these cities were  once prosperous industrial centers.)

In fact, the exhibition turned out to be reasonably interesting from a sociological perspective.  According to the caption, London arms-makers of the period were renowned for their skill at making technologically advanced guns that maximized speed, accuracy, and ease of handling to meet the needs of the sporting gentry.  One small double-barreled pocket pistol on display, for example, could be fired from both barrels by pulling twice in quick succession on the trigger.

Many of the guns were quite plain, made of highly polished wood with steel barrels that were sometimes blued. But arms made for the wealthy were often highly ornamented, and this is true of today's object, or objects: a pair of pistols made in 1800-1801 for the Prince of Wales, the future George IV, who was quite the gun fancier. He was also fond of French neoclassical designs. These pistols, which are approximately 16 inches long, are decorated with side plates of silver that depict a Nereid riding on and feeding a sea leopard (apparently, the image was based on a wall painting found during excavations at Herculaneum in the previous century), and with trigger guards that show Hercules with an Amazon. The Gorgon's head on the pommel is particularly finely wrought and quite dramatic. But I always thought of neoclassical design as associated with restraint - this Gorgon is anything but.

What impresses, too, is that presumably George IV and his associates would have understood these classical references. I wonder whether this is true of Theresa May; I would bet the ranch that it's not true of Donald J. Trump.

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