A 10-Bore Flintlock Sporting Gun by S. Bowdler, Circa 1740. With rebrowned barrel slightly flared towards the muzzle and with silver fore-sight, breech engraved 'JOHN HARMAN, LONDON' within an elongated loop along the tapering top flat and with a band of foliage at the rear (engraving refreshed), gold-lined touch-hole, border engraved tang grooved for sighting and decorated with foliage, rounded lock with moulded border and signed in capitals, the pan with water-drains, figured full stock (muzzle-band missing) with extended butt, carved with a scallop shell behind the barrel tang, and inlaid with silver wire scrollwork and silver dots, steel mounts comprising side-plate chiselled and pierced with foliage and a scallop shell, chiselled vacant escutcheon with a shell above, butt-plate engraved along the heel tang, trigger-guard with early form of acorn finial and engraved with an oval motif on the bow, turned ramrod-pipes, and later ramrod, private Birmingham proof marks, barrelsmith's mark SB, probably of Bowdler 

Provenance
W. Keith Neal Collection
Christie's London, Fine Antique Firearms from the W. Keith Neal Collection, 8 November 1995, lot 103

Literature
W. Keith Neal & D.H.L. Back, Great British Gunmakers 1740-1790, 1975, pl. 520

S. Bowdler appears to be unrecorded