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The accompanying brass cornered oak and leather takedown case
is marked “The RIGHT HONBLE LORD KEANE.” and “PURDEY
RIFLE.” in gilt letters and has Baron Keane’s coat of arms on
the escutcheon. It is lined with red Morocco leather with gilt
stamping and contains a deluxe set of loading and maintenance
equipment, including gilt Dixon cartridge extractor and gilt
Purdey loading tool. A canvas and leather outer with painted
baron’s coronet over “Rt Honble Lord Keane./Purdey Rifle” is
also included.
The history of Purdey’s exhibition guns displayed in Paris in
1878, including this double rifle, is discussed in detail in “The
Paris Exhibition of 1878” by Harlow in a series of three articles
published in “The Vintage Gun Journal” in January-March of 2022. He
notes that the list of the exhibits for the Parisian Exposition Universelle
held between May 1 and November 10, 1878, and indicates that the
exhibition “was a landmark event for the company.” Some of the guns
from the list had been completed as early as 1872, and thus the earlier
guns may have also been displayed at the Centennial Exposition in
Philadelphia in 1876. He writes, “From surviving records, the Purdey
display in Paris appears to have been the largest of any exhibition by
the firm in the Victorian period. The majority of the display items were
sent over on 18 April, about two weeks before the exhibition opened.
This included twenty-nine guns, framed pictures, warrants, and all of
the cleaning and maintenance accessories needed for the show.” Three
additional guns were shipped on April 26th, and another nine where
sent out during
the exhibition.
19th century journalist George Augustus Sala writing in “Paris Herself
Again in 1878-9” went into detail about the 1878 exhibition, including:
“There is a glass case belonging to a Gold Medalist which it would
be decidedly unjust to pass without mention ere the Exposition
Universelle comes to the end of its wondrous career. I allude to one
containing the sporting guns and rifles manufactured by Messrs.
James Purdey & Sons of Oxford Street, London. 307