A RARE 3-POUNDER BRONZE CANNON ON ITS PRESENTATION FIELD CARRIAGE FROM THE MANUFACTORY AT SERINGAPATAM, PERHAPS MYSORE, LATE 18TH CENTURY

with multi-stage barrel cast in relief, with bulbous muzzle, a raised band of conventional foliage ahead of the muzzle astragal, bands of stylised palmette foliage about the reinforcing rings, along the flanks of the chase and also over the length of the second and first reinforces, a stylised spray of flowers along the top of the chase, a raised cartouche on the first reinforce cut with a nineteenth-century presentation inscription, a pair of lifting handles formed as crouching tigers, a pair of trunnions each capped with a bronze tiger's head cast in the round, and the cascable button en suite; on its finely constructed teak split-trail presentation carriage, with full iron and bronze fittings, including elevating screw, trunnion plates, cap squares, folding trail lever and a pair of iron-shod spoked cambered wheels, the fellows studded with a series of twelve snarling tiger's head bosses cast in high relief, and each wheel retained by a large axel boss also cast in the form of a tiger's head

PROVENANCE

General Charles Stewart, Marquess of Londonderry, removed from the family seat, Wynard Park

EXHIBITED

Tigers Round The Throne, The Court of Tipu Sultan (1750-1799), Zamana Gallery, London, 1990, pp. 66-7

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

Robin Wigington, Souvenir Weaponry from Seringapatam, The Journal of the Arms & Armour Society, vol. XV, no. 3, March 1996

CATALOGUE NOTE

inscription
az sarkar-i sardar pir muhammad khan ba del-e nazuk zi (?) 1242
"From His Excellency the Commander Pir Muhammad Khan. Live with tender heart (?) AH 1242 / (1826-7)"