Item ref: 3796
W. Keith Neal
R.T. Gwynn, Sold Christie’s 24th April 2001
The International Hunting Exhibition, Berlin, 2-21 November 1937
Steel priming-flasks of this distinctive type were intended for military use, specifically by cavalry armed with a pair of wheel-lock holster pistols.
Further examples, all near-identical, are preserved in a number of German historical armoury collections. Others of the same type are in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (14.25.1469), the von Kienbusch Collection in The Philadelphia Museum of Art (1963 cat. no. 723) and in the Musée de l’Armée, Paris (M.2101).