Except that the other judgment from 1898 does not mention Courally whatsoever.
Either he was part of a different corporation with Lebeau post bankruptcy, or he bought the name after AL's death. Or maybe he bought the brand from the bank which received the assets left behind after his death.
Basically unless I am missing something, there is today no evidence that Courally worked with Lebeau while he was alive.
Again this discussion is kind of irrelevant.
Gunmakers (and many industrialists) need a few elements
- a Marketing strategy
- Technology
- a skilled workforce
- capital
Examples abound of successful companies where the lead person is a sole marketer who make do without most of the other bits.
Harris Holland was one, but William Evans, WJ Jeffery and many others are in that category.
Some companies start that way and gather the workforce later (H&H), others go the other way around and end up outsourcing their fare (such as Gastinne-Renette).
Even Purdey acquired their flagship technology from Beesley.
There is nothing wrong with that, those are just different business models.
Again, at the end of the day, what matters most for us is the end result e.g. the gun.
There is no way that the court of Russia would have used substandard or even average implements, so if they used Courally's stuff, it had to be very nice. After all, they had shooting events with all the crowned heads of Europe, so they certainly could not look bad.
The Liege trade was plenty good enough to produce top quality anything.
Who actually did it, we'll likely never know.
Of course, the quality of the stuff sent to St-Petersburg might have been entirely different from the bulk of the production. So as always, this a gun by gun evaluation.
Best regards,
WC-
