William Muese Made Scale Replica of a British Bronze "Grasshopper" Field Piece on Carriage

1.75" bore. 21.75" 5-stage barrel (23.5" including the cascable). SN: 4. Brass barrel, wooden carriage, iron furniture. Single shot muzzleloading smoothbore cannon. Breech marked W: MEUSE FECIT and a large Broad Arrow is on the top of the tube. Tube is 4.9" in diameter at the breech, and 4" in diameter at the largest portion of the swell at the muzzle. The 1.5" diameter trunions are 6.5" wide, end to end and located 10.75" from the muzzle. The right trunion is marked 4 over a Masonic seal {Square & Compass} and the left trunion is marked No 72. The tube is mounted on a replica field carriage that has 30.5" six-piece, twelve-spoke wheels and the carriage has an overall length of nominally 67" including the tube and an overall width of nominally 28" hub to hub. The cannon is accompanied by a group of scale replica implements including a sponge, a wiper, three rammers, a worm and a tompion.

William "Bill" Meuse (1938-2012) was a long time National Park Service employee who during the course of his career was assigned to the NPS sites at Harpers Ferry, Fredericksburg, the Springfield Armory and Saratoga just to name a few. He was the Chief of Historic Ordnance for the NPS and was instrumental in accurately "re-arming" some eleven American Revolutionary War NPS sites with historic ordnance for the Bi-Centenial celebration in 1976. Many of these guns were painstakingly created replicas that Bill produced by recreating the historically correct patterns which were used by foundries to cast the tubes. He then supervised the production of authentic carriages to mount them on. In all he was responsible for producing approximately 100 authentic replica cannons which were deployed at several NPS locations for the Bi-Centennial, many of which are still on display to this day. During his career as one of the leading experts on period cannons, he produced a number of replica guns for use outside the NPS system, including some scale guns like this one. Bill's work is highly prized for its authenticity and attention to detail and is extremely desirable on the collector market. The beauty of a scale gun like this is that is can easily be displayed in a den or library of a home or in a professional's office providing the ambiance of historical ordnance without overwhelming the space or requiring an entire cannon crew to move it.

Note: Due to size and weight in-house shipping is not available for this item.

This lot is located in Cincinnati.