Small antique guns make big impact at National Ornamental Metal Museum

The first exhibition in the city related to the 2011 Memphis in May International Festival honoring Belgium may be small, but it's no flash in the pan.

Ha-ha, that's a joke, because the show, "Antique Guns from the Collection of the Liège Arms Museum," at the National Ornamental Metal Museum through June 19, includes several flintlock pistols, which propelled their shot by means of a spark that ignited a bit of gunpowder poured into a small "pan"; if the gunpowder produced a flame without sending the shot through the barrel, that "flash in the pan" was a distinct let-down — and a disaster if you were facing a duelist — hence the present meaning of that phrase, "something that gets off to a brilliant start but doesn't produce the expected result."

A double-barreled flintlock pocket pistol from 1740 is included in "Antique Guns from the Collection of the Liège Arms Museum," at the National Ornamental Metal Museum through June 19.

Any exhibition at the Ornamental Metal Museum concerns the craft and art of metalwork, so it's not surprising that the 10 objects in the show are, in addition to being weapons of personal destruction, surpassingly beautiful. They bear the same relationship to the pistols carried by, say, the average pirate or cut-purse, as an Alfa Romeo bears to a Yugo.

Engraved, embossed, with gold inlay and delicate floral tracings and here and there the impress of a heraldic animal, there's a sense in which these pistols and hunting pieces embody the aspirations of European history and culture between about 1740 and 1860. Even the weapons from the 1860s that employed the latest in percussion cap technology, several steps beyond the flintlock, look to the past in their elaborate decoration.

Liège was the center of weapons manufacturing in Belgium going back to the Middle Ages, though it was particularly known from the end of the 17th century for small-arms, that is guns that could be carried and operated by a single person. While by the end of the 18th century there were factories that turned out mass-market weapons for the armies of the contentious continent, the workshops of Liège specialized in custom-made pieces that were as comely (and perhaps costly) as they were efficient, because, let's face it, a gun is an artifact whose purpose is deadly earnest.

For example, that piece from 1740 is a winsome and wicked-looking little flintlock pocket pistol with two over-and-under barrels. I would not have wanted such a thing pushed against my ribs on some dark lightless European night, whether in the hand of thief or irate citizen. Likewise the six-shot "pinfire" pepperbox pistol from 1854, called pepperbox because the cartridges were stored in and fired from a round canister with six barrels. Pinfire technology was an advance on the muzzle-loading flintlock, because the gun powder was contained inside a metal cartridge; the hammer came down on a pin that protruded from the cartridge, driving it down to ignite the powder.

Perhaps the most intricately decorated of the guns is a "High-Grade Pinfire Revolver" circa 1870. It seems impossible to take such an object seriously as a weapon, so lavish are its embellishments, yet some military officer must have cherished it as well as employed it during combat or maybe for ceremonial purpose. As happens with many artifacts in museums, the personal history is lacking.

Exhibitions associated with Memphis in May have always varied widely in quality from year to year and venue to venue, but as far as "Antique Guns" is concerned, it may be small, but it's primo.

"Antique Guns from the Collection of the Liège Arms Museum"

At the National Ornamental Metal Museum, 374 Metal Museum Drive, through June 19. Call 774-6380.

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