No bill for this pair of pistols survives in the Duchy of Cornwall accounts, although RCIN 61062 was probably commissioned after Frederick, Prince of Wales’s death, for the young Prince George. This form of pistol with a ‘turn-off’ barrel to allow for loading was extremely popular in the early eighteenth-century, particularly for guns for personal protection which did not have to be reloaded rapidly. The locks include safety catches – another innovation of the period.

David Columbell may have been of Huguenot descent; he was apprenticed to the gunmaker, Gerrett Johnson, in 1712 and after obtaining his freedom worked in the area around Westminster. He was appointed Gunmaker in Ordnance in 1756.

Text adapted from The First Georgians; Art and Monarchy 1714 - 1760, London, 2014.