Showing posts with label cieszynka. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cieszynka. Show all posts

Sunday, August 11, 2024

Stalking horse & fowling piece ca 1674AD

 Salvete Omnes,



today is Sunday, and perhaps a good day to bring your attention to hunting, especially hunting birds with a fowling piece and a horse.
In this book ''The gentleman's recreation in four parts' 1674 ''- 



inside we can find several pages devoted to a subject of a fowling gun and a stalking horse.









the  book on horsemanship - Georgii Simonis Winterii Bellerophon - I linked on my blog has three plates showing  training a stalking horse for such hunts.





In our part of the European woods,i.e., Central and Eastern Europe of the XVII century,  there was a town, then a Duchy of Cieszyn/Tesin, part of the Bohemian Crown, known as Cieszyn/Tesin on the river Olza, where gun smiths had been producing amazingly beautiful fowling pieces since the XVI century. 

I wrote about one of these Cieszynka Tscheshinke/Teschinke guns  - the gun of our king Sigismund III - one with the winged hussars on its sides. 




Fowling pieces in America, fowlers and first guns made in English America - a pdf.

Valete

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Cieszynka rifle circa 1610 and winged hussars



Salve,
a short post about a rather unusual subject:
AD 1610 wheel-lock gun with its particular gunlock plate adorned with a fight scene engraving showing winged hussar cavalry armed with lances and bows pursuing the pistol-armed Western style reiter cavalrymen.

The engraving is singed with an monogram HL.F and based on its origin and history is qualified as a Tscheshinke/Teschinke (Cieszynka) rifle (wheel lock ) made by one of the master craftsmen from the Silesian town of Cieszyn/Teschen, famous since the Middle Ages for their intricately made gun, rifles, pistols and combined weapons.
It was one of two guns made for the Polish monarch Sigismund III circa AD 1610 that then the the king made these guns his gift to his brother-in-law the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II in Vienna, Austria, where it has been safely residing at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
The hussars are shown in their full panoply - lances, armor, the companion with a wing,  his retainer with a shield etc.

retainer with a shield

more winged armored hussars and a sabre armed retainer

perhaps an allegory of the Polish king attacking his Swedish cousin
The photo gallery at wiki commons.
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.
enjoy
ps
there is a fairly new book on the Cieszyn/Teschen gun making school .
Chicago Art Institute has some examples of the Teschen guns - eg this from 1650. or from 1630. The Higgins armory shows this one.