Ripoll Pistols Were Manufactured in at Least Been Identified, a Wheel-Lock Arquebus Dated 1546 Two Areas of Italy

Today I shall deal primarily with Ripoll firearms. Our interest in Catalan firearms, and those of However, it is now becoming evident that Ripoll was Ripoll, begins, for all practical purposes, with the involved in the firearms manufacture of neighbouring seventeenth century, over three hundred years after Catalan towns such as Igualada and Manresa as well Aragon acquired her first Italian possession. Until as in that of Barcelona. It also appears that many now, only one sixteenth-century Catalan firearm has so-called Ripoll pistols were manufactured in at least been identified, a wheel-lock arquebus dated 1546 two areas of Italy. and now in Madrid's Real Armeria. Its self-spanning Every arms collector has a nodding acquaintance at lock is German in concept and shows none of the least with those funny-looking Spanish pistols characteristics later to be associated with the area. covered with sheet metal. But, to paraphrase the Although apparently manufactured in the area of theme of a talk given by Dr. Arne Hoff to this group Montserrat, it may well be the product of an immi- in 1970, "what do we really know about the firearms grant German gunsmith. of Ripoll?" The earliest firearms to be encountered which For years the broad generalities of Ripoll arms have definitely can be connected with Rip011 are the five been familiar to us: stock covered with sheet metal wheel-lock arms, three pistols and two arquebuses, tracery; pistols with ball butts, arquebuses with the scattered between Venice and Chicago. None of these so-called "CatalBn stock"; miquelet locks on both. We dates any later than the second decade of the seven- know many makers' names and marks, but have only teenth century and apparently no earlier than 1600. the sketchiest idea of their working lifespan (since They are all closely related by their decoration which present compilations are based on guesswork and the consists of Renaissance-type scrollwork chiselled in most rudimentary information and are thus practi- low relief on lock, barrel, and sheet-iron stock over- cally worthless), and we are hard-pressed even to lay. The three pistols have unusually long barrels of place them correctly in time. small caliber in the manner of French wheel-locks of What we do not know is considerably more com- precisely the same period (Fig. I). They have abbre- prehensive. What is it that makes a Ripoll arm so viated fishtail butts which, in contrast to their long easily recognizable, and why should this be? Or, in barrels, gives them an appearance which is peculiarly fact are Ripoll firearms as recognizable as it would their own. The three originally had belt hooks, but appear at first glance? the original sideplate which would have supported It has been suggested that the elements of design the hook of the V&A example is lost and a more apparently peculiar to Ripoll firearms have their modern screwplate has been substituted. Renaissance source in Moorish art. This is an easy answer since classicism is obvious in the decoration of three of the the Moors, or Arabs, ruled areas of Spain from 71'1 five arms whose cock necks are in the form of fluted until 1492. Their influence in the art of certain of columns (Fig. 2). All five locks have pancovers these areas endured until well into the sixteenth which rotate in a manner reminiscent of the earliest century. In fewer than ten years following their years of the German wheel-lock and this feature invasion from Africa, the Moors had driven a wedge seems to be directly derived. into the land which extended almost to the northern Interestingly enough, before Ripoll firearms were coast thereby dividing the Spanish Visigothic empire recognized in Spain, the Count of Valencia de Don into two separate groups. To oversimplify, these Juan described the Royal Arrnoury example in his groups developed independently into what were to 1898 catalog as "an Italian wheel-lock petronel.. .the become the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, the latter lock, sideplate, and other plates which adorn the comprised in part of the powerful counties of stock are. profusely chiselled with small figures Cataluna. The two kingdoms were not united until and grotesques of best Italian taste." This gentleman, almost eight centuries later under Ferdinand and whose enormous private collection consisted in largc Isabel. This division was such that Aragon remained part of Moorish artifacts, saw nothing Arabic in the as a buffer between Castile and the rest of Europe. ornamentation of this pistol. We can apply the same However, the Arab advance of the eighth century was measure to its counterparts. stopped short or quickly reversed before it made any Apparently in the second decade of the seventeenth significant penetration of the Catalan counties or century the fishtail pistol butt gave way to the lemon what was then the tiny county of Aragon. When these butt - slightly less ovoid than the French - which in areas were united, and a concerted effort at recon- turn was to evolve into the ball butt so typical of the quest began to drive back the boundaries of the area. The lemon butt appears only on later Ripoll adjacent Arab kingdoms, no manifestations of Muslin wheel-lock pistols whose barrels are much shorter art remained in Cataluna as they did in central or than those of the fishtail pistols, and on the pedreny- southern Spain. als, the earliest of the miquelet pistols, which appear In 1283 the king of Aragon inherited the kingdom to be contemporaneous with the later wheel-locks, of Sicily consequently bringing Sardinia and Naples and which still retain the earlier exaggerated barrels into the sphere of Aragonese influence. Until the (Fig. 3). Napoleonic Wars of the nineteenth century the Kingdom of Naples was either governed or directly influenced by Spain. Political considerations, there- fore, quite early set the direction of the orientation: away from the Arabs and Castile, toward the Med- iterranean and Italy. Reprinted from the American Society of Arms Collectors Bulletin 25:2-12 Additional articles available at http://americansocietyofarmscollectors.org/resources/articles/ Figure 1 Ripoll Whcel-lock pistol I dated 1614. Lnrldon, Viclorir~ and Albert Mussurn James D.Luvin Figure 2 Lor:k OJ early Sevenleenth Century Riuoll Wheel-lock aistol. Note fluted cock neck and lack of manual safety. Venice, Museo Correr Figure 3 Miquelet "pedrenyal", Early lock has downward-acting mainspring, Museo de Ripoll Figure 4 Later Wheel-lock pistols from Ripoll. Locks signed SOLER have manual safeties. Madrid, Museo Arqueologico Figure & Degenerate form of renaissance decoration of the type used in Ripoll from about the middle of the Seventeenth Century. Collection of C. P. Bedford. Figure 6 Symmetrical design with birds, from the 1638 pattern book of Piquot There is little difference between the locks of the The miquelet pedrenyals, except for their length, lemon-butt wheel-locks and those of the earlier have the same stock construction as the later wheel- fishtail style. The rather archaic rotating pancover is locks, and like them are mounted only in iron. Brass even retained, but the lemon-butt models have the seems to appear as a stock covering after the middle added feature of a manual safety. Three examples of of the seventeenth century while silver apparently this type are signed SOLER, the only signature to was not used until the eighteenth. appear on any Ripoll wheellocks (Fig. 4). One ex- The pedrenyal lock is <he earliest miquelet to cavated lemon-butt pistol now in the museum at appear in Cataluiia. There are examples in the Pauil- Ripoll is fitted with an imported Brescian wheel-lock. hac collection which may date as early as the 1620's. There is a significant change in the stocks of these These oppose the common cliche that Spanish later pistols. Apart from the shape of the butt, the miquelet mainsprings work upward against the heel sheet-iron covering shows a degeneration in the of the cock while Italian springs work downward execution of the ornamentation. Where this was relief against the toe. The pedrenyal mainspring is down- chiselled in the case of the earlier wheel-locks, it is ward-acting and the cock has a dog catch at its heel. now simply engraved, often rather cursorily, in casual The dip in the pedrenyal lockplate is reminiscent of imitation of renaissance scrollwork. This feature, plus the wheel-lock, but simply indicates conformity to a the lack of a manual safety, places the two wheel-lock stvle. These locks were not used to modernize anti- arquebuses previously mentioned in the same early quated wheel-lock arms. category as the fishtail pistols. The inspiration for the relief chiselling and stock carving on the earliest Ripoll firearms is entirely European Renaissance and its equivalent is to be found in the French pattern books of Picquot and Marcou dating from the 1630's. Since the Spanish arms themselves predate the published patterns t)y about two decades, it is obviously that Ripoll makers, far from being isolated, were acutely aware of cur- rent European design. The V&A pistol illustrates this very well. Comparatively large metal plaques are decorated with foliar scrolls (Fig. 5). This design is repeatcd in the carving of the skck. Thr: plateop- posite the lock has a symmetrical spray passing through an ornamental central ring just as in several versions of a like design in Picquot's 1638 patterns (Fig. 6). The symmetrical spray, often with exotic Figure 5 birds, also found in Picquot, continues as a major Reverse side of Fig. 1 element of Ripoll decoration through the middle of showing renaissance the eighteenth century.

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