Collection Magazine - Issue 1 - Autumn/Winter 22/23 - Magazine - Page 56
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A visit to Audley House is to be bathed in some 130 years worth
of memorabilia and momentous moments — such as when General
Eisenhower and Churchill met in the building’s Long Room to draw up
battle plans during World War Two. A gunmakers seems more than an
apt location for such planning, of course, even if rather larger bores than
Purdey’s typically made would ultimately be required. Not that it was above
trying: during both first and second world conflicts, Purdey, like so many
other makers of elite products at the time, dutifully switched its production
over to the mass-manufacture of gun parts for the war effort.
But, deeper perhaps than becoming a small part of a great history, the
purchase of a Purdey is also celebration of craft — yes, customers are buying
a bespoke piece of engineering; but they’re also buying something engraved,
sculptural and artistic, as one might well expect of an object requiring some
500 hours to construct and another 500 to engrave by copper wheel. Small
wonder only around 70 are made each year. Order one now and you can
expect delivery in about two years.
“All of the craftspeople at Purdey love seeing a gun come in showing
signs of good use, though they know that sometimes they’re delivering
breathtakingly beautiful guns that, like a watch, might only get used a few
times a year — the guns just become part of a collection,” says Irby. “If anyone
is kind enough to buy a Purdey, and you’re happy to just hang it on your wall,
then great. But, well, staff at Purdey would really like to see it used.”
It’s easy to get awed by the artistry — even if that entails having the
opening bars to ‘White Christmas’ engraved on your gun, as Bing Crosby
did — to the point of forgetting that a Purdey is, in fact, a weapon, with
all of the complex construction implied by being able to accurately and
repeatedly deliver an explosive projectile over distance. That has its own
history, of course, something some clients appreciate.
Most will likely order a ‘side by side;’ despite having been designed
some 140 years ago, still the definitive Purdey shotgun, and best known
for its so-called Beesley action — or Assisted Open Action Mechanism
— patented in 1880 and, ingeniously, using the residual energy from
the mainspring to open the gun and eject spent cartridges. But other
commissions are much trickier. One of the bigger challenges Purdey’s
gunmakers have faced over recent years was a request for a single shot
rifle with an octagonal barrel, a defunct, almost ancient design that meant
reverse engineering an archive example in order to re-learn how it could
be done, that resulting re-captured knowledge just about making the
project commercially viable.
