A Pair of Holland & Holland Tri-Bores
What if a gentleman already owns more London best guns than Her Majesty the Queen?
Doug Tate is an Editor at Large for Shooting Sportsmanwith more than 350 articles published in the past 30 years. A British native, he attended the College of Art & Industrial Design, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and has a keen eye for aesthetics, from a well-turned sentence to a well-filed gun action. He has been a longtime contributor to The Field, in the UK, and is the author of the books Birmingham Gunmakers and British Gun Engraving. He now lives in the Pacific Northwest.
What if a gentleman already owns more London best guns than Her Majesty the Queen?
There was a time when all the royal palaces of Europe featured a cabinet d’arms displaying everything from swords to sidearms to shoguns in gleaming vitrines. Now an exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art, in Reno, that is timed to coincide with the SCI convention illuminates this lost world.
Longthorne Gunmakers, the English firm famous for its patented barrel technology, recently complemented its collection of 12-, 16- and 20-bore over/under shotguns with a 28-bore.
Mixed-bag shooting with Wingshoot Africa
Have you heard the old story of a gun taking so long to build because the maker is waiting for the tree to grow for the stock?
Dazzling innovation is an axiom of fine Italian gunmaking. Even so, the gullwing Bertuzzi was a standout.
When we learned of F.lli Piotti’s new “droplock,” we asked the Italian maker for details.
Some guns are made to create a brilliant impression in their entirety. Others are intended for detailed delectation engraved in a way that rewards close inspection and insists on their handling and the play of light. The Tallett-engraved Charles Boswell .410 is a rare example of both.
The talented gun-engraving family of Dave, Brad and Wesley Tallett have buckled into the idea of making belts of hide with ferrous fasteners.
If you wanted to know what interested British gunmakers—and their clients—during the shotgun’s golden era, you could do worse than look to Frederick Beesley.
“Our Renaissance gun has intricate but delicate scroll that is indicative of the 17th Century style," says Longthorne Marketing Director Elaine Stewart.
The Perdix, which is a selection from Powell’s Continental line, is a sideplated 12- or 20-bore over/under based on a Batista Rizzini action.