English Gunmakers: The Birmingham and Provincial Gun Trade in the 18th and 19th Century - Hardcover

De Witt Bailey; Douglas A. Nie

9780853682127: English Gunmakers: The Birmingham and Provincial Gun Trade in the 18th and 19th Century

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0853682127 ISBN 13: 9780853682127

Publisher: Arms and Armour Press, 1978

This volume represents the first attempt to catalogue the many hundreds of individuals and firms that comprised the English gun trade during the flintlock and percussion eras. Incorporating the experinece and research of a great many students of this fascinating field over forty years, it has been compiled from a systematic examination of national, regional, county and city documentary sources, and has involved the careful examination of many thousands of guns, consultations with collectors and museum curators, as well as discussions with local historians in order to arrive at a clearer and more accurate understanding of the English gun trade.

The lists of gunmakers, gunsmiths, barrel makers, gun lock makers, stockers and gun warehouses are presented in three sections. The first deals with the Birmingham gun trade from its beginnings at the close of the seventeenth century to 1900, and, where possible, includes birth or death dates and relevant firearms patents. The second section lists provincial makers by the towns in which they worked, so that the size of the gun trade in any one town, its possible concentration in one area, and its rise and decline may easily be seen. The third section is an alphabetical listing of the provincial makers for ready reference, and contains the town and county of operation and the dates when the man is known to have been working. Appendices include a tabulation of the distribution of gunmakers by county and town and an extensive bibliography of published and unpublished books, periodicals and directories.

As a basic reference source of information on English gunmakers, this book represents a very considerable step forward: collectors will find it of inestimable value in dating weapons, and students of Englsih firearms will be enabled to form a clearer and more accurate picture of a very complex and highly skilled trade.

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