16ga.com ~ View topic

I have recently acquired a beautiful old French 16ga double made by Raymond Guignant in Rouen-Normandy.
Rouen is the historical capital city of Normandy, in northwestern France on the River Seine, and currently the capital of the Haute-Normandie (Upper Normandy) région. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe, It was one of the capitals of the Anglo-Norman dynasties, which ruled both England and large parts of modern France from the 11th century to the 15th century. It is in Rouen that the English burnt Joan of Arc in 1431.
It is an Sidelock ejector gun, articulated front trigger,bushed firing pins and chiseled fences and Belgium proof marks. Anyone have any info on the maker etc,etc. Probably a late 20's-30's gun.

[/img]http://www.hunt101.com/img/476156.jpg
[img]http://www.hunt101.com/img/476157.jpg
[/img]http://www.hunt101.com/img/476158.jpg

*Last edited by Leighton on Thu Feb 22, 2007 7:38 pm; edited 2 times in total*

Just click on the hotlinks below to see the pictures

http://www.hunt101.com/img/476156.jpg
http://www.hunt101.com/img/476157.jpg
http://www.hunt101.com/img/476158.jpg

copy and paste works - nice piece!

Joined: 17 Jan 2007 Posts: 76 Location: north Texas

Did France have their own proof house in the 1920s? St. Etienne? If not, maybe that's why it was proofed in Belgium.

A very fine shotgun....just look at all of the pins in that sidelock!

Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 40 Location: Memphis, TN

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Congratulations! Very nice gun

[quote="xtimberman"]Did France have their own proof house in the 1920s? St. Etienne? If not, maybe that's why it was proofed in Belgium.

A very fine shotgun....just look at all of the pins in that sidelock![/quote]

They had a proof house,but proofs were not mandatory in France until 1960
so I believe quality makers sent them to Belgium to be proofed so they would be accepted by other Countries.

Member Joined: 26 Apr 2005 Posts: 743

Leighton, that's a very nice gun! Highly unlikely, however, that it was made in Rouen. (I spent a summer there, teaching French to American college students, in 1977.) The gunmaking business in France has always been concentrated in St. Etienne and, to a lesser extent, in Paris. Not likely that an individual "gunmaker" in Rouen had all the skills necessary to build a gun from scratch. It's not at all unusual to find a gun with the address of a French city (other than St. Etienne) on the barrels, but the gun having been made in Belgium. I have a gun with a Paris address and Belgian proofs. The gun may have been "finished" by C. Mode in Paris, but it was almost certainly made in Belgium. I think that's almost certainly the case with your gun.

One advantage, with Belgian proofs--if they're recent enough--is that you can date the production of the gun much more precisely than you can a gun with French proofmarks. If your gun has a 16 over a C in a diamond, then it is pre-1924 and more precise dating will be difficult. If it has a 16 followed by either 65 or 70, inside a sort of capital C, then it is post-1924 and there is probably another date code somewhere on the barrel flats--most likely a single letter, in script. If you can find that, I can give you the year in which it was proofed.

France did indeed have its own proof house. Two of them, in fact, in the 20th century: St. Etienne (where the majority of French guns underwent proof) and Paris.

Regardless, that looks to be a high quality gun in quite good condition. I like the leaves on the fences.

Larry,
On the bottom of the action is engraved Raymond Guignant-- Rouen.
Do you think he was a retailer and the gun was actually made in Belgium for his store?

Member Joined: 26 Apr 2005 Posts: 743

Yes, I think that's very likely. Think you got some very good responses over on doublegunshop. Quite a few folks over there, including a few Europeans, who are pretty sharp about foreign doubles.

I went to the doublegun board and got some intimate answers. For some reason I had problems posting photos here although the procedure is theoretically the same. It is a Belgium gun made by Emile Warnant of Liege.