doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com French Gunmaker Mode of Paris

Is anyone familiar with the French maker Mode of Paris? I'm looking at a gun by him and can find nothing on the internet about the firm. Retailer? If so, who would likely have made his guns?

Thanks.

Mechanics in Liege unless Mr. Brown or WildCattle indicate otherwise???

C�lestin Jules Mod� a Paris:

http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=322990&page=1

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

C. Mode was on the tail end of the Parisian gun trade.
Qualified workers had all but disappeared, and the bulk of the Parisian gun trade was fast becoming retailers and nothing but.
Guns would have been made primarily in Belgium and St Etienne.
It's very hard to know who the actual maker was.
The British outfits had some outlets in Paris as well, such as C&H, H&H and Greener, some directly, some through retailers such as Guinard. Those would have been sold under their own original brand names in most cases.
That being said, some Belgian built guns made for some Parisian outfits are just top quality (and comparatively cheap nowadays).
The Guyot retailed guns are usually fantastic. Other very well known firms (Gastinne, Faure Lepage) are more variable in quality.
Best regards,
WC-

WC, that's a spot on summation; I didn't know you had it in you. I'd like to see someone fess-up that pre-WWII and for sure pre-WWI the continental gun-trade or a vital portion thereof was on the backs of the mechanics of Liege or that they were a critical component without which there would have been a void. I've chased C�lestin Jules Mod� for a time and almost all of his wares were top shelf, and are a sleeper for the most part.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Thank you Raimey, but I am not quite sure how to take your post...
I am just writing a distilled version of my observations.
BTW, what I wrote applies to Paris and not St-Etienne, which was more or less self sufficient.
From the 1900 era Parisian retailers, I really like (in no order): Guyot, Pirlet, Roblin, Mode, Weill, Nouvelle and the in-house production of Gastinne and Faure-Lepage. Some wares from Galland (Paris) can be real good as well.
Arthur Nouvelle was a very interesting fellow who wrote a book on Gunsmithing that is very interesting but somewhat pompous.
Very few of his guns are around.

In general, the French market was far more of a mass market than an elite market. Additionally, very few guns survived the wars intact. I believe that more often than not they ended up in the USA by way of Germany in the 1940-1945 era.
Best regards,
WC-

Well, now that we've established that St. Etienne could not have made it without Liege . . . what more is there to say???

WC, while not having the evidence at hand, and being poor at searching this site, it has been my understanding that Roblin was a gunmaker rather than simply a retailer, with one or two patents to his name.