Wheellock Rifle with Spanner, Shot Extracting Tool, and Shooting Patch ca. 1665 Martin Kammerer In very good condition and retaining its companion spanner and original ramrod with detachable barrel-shot extracting tool, this fine wheellock rifle is a rare example of a distinctive class of luxury seventeenth-century sporting firearms that chiefly stood out for the striking adornment of their stocks with unconventional--and sometimes eclectically combined--materials and decorative techniques. The metal components are gilded and predominantly plain, allowing the roughness of the stocks natural staghorn veneer, and the colorfulness of the finely painted enameled oval plaque on the cheek to become more evident. While occasionally used to veneer the stocks of firearms as early as the mid-sixteenth century, natural staghorn veneer only took on a much more exotic character a century later, once a handful of gunmakers began to use it in conjunction with other unconventional or precious materia