Wheellock Sporting Rifle dated 1658 Martin Kammerer This fine wheellock Eevenrifle is a rare example of a distinctive class of luxury seventeenth-century sporting firearms that chiefly stand out for the striking adornment of their stocks with unconventionaland sometimes eclectically combinedmaterials and decorative techniques. The metal components are predominantly plain, allowing the highly burnished and translucent scarlet veneer of the stock to be the primary focus of viewer’s attention. The veneer, made from the shells of Asian tortoises, is a potent manifestation of the Baroque predilection for the unusual and eccentric, applied to the gunmaker’s art.Fewer than a dozen rifles decorated in this fashion are known. Sevenincluding this onebear the signature of Martin Kammerer, one of the preeminent German gunmakers of the Baroque era. They are preserved in the Státní Hrad Bítov; the Tøjhusmuseet, Copenhagen (inv. B. 558); the Wittelsbach Stiftung, Munich; the Philadelphia Museum o