Where the heck is Immel when you need him? I realize that much earlier pieces - north German and 'Brandenburg' style rifles for example - used individual sideplates for the lock nails, but they were nothing like these. I know that there will be some pushing for this to be a 1750s rifle but I just don't see it, those side pieces being exhibit A and the carving to my mind being exhibit B; I see this carving and the shorter cheek being a continued development of the what is present upon the Marshall rifle and which would ultimately end up as the very "full" carved Moll and Rupp style.
It's particularly interesting to finally see color photos of this. I've had the Wes White disc for a couple of years now and the black/white is one thing, but it takes on an entirely new life in good color photography.
Hey, I just now found out about this gun selling at auction!
I always thought those two little sideplate washers were kinda incongruous with the rest of the hardware. In the old B&W photos, they look like flat pieces of metal with engraving. No match at all with the rest of the hardware. In the color photos, you can see that they have some cast-in relief to them, so not so different from the rest of the metalwork after all.
My thought is that it is restocked ca. 1770. Obviously, the barrel tang was broken, and rather than fixing it, they just squared it off, which forced them to do that horrible goofy too-far-forward triggerguard placement... which drives me crazy.
I suppose it's possible that those little sideplates are from the original rifle, say, 1730, but they are kind of anomalous for that date. I can't think of any other gun off hand that has a similar sideplate arrangement. You do often see washers, basically, with flower shapes, or whatever, or just plain round washers, going way back, but the little swirly extensions are unusual. They are suitably Baroque, though, so they may well be from such an early date.
