The Jules Bury Collection

    We have all heard them: the hidden-treasure stories. The barn-found Bugatti, the walled-up vintage wines, and my favorite: cases of unused Brown Bess muskets stored beneath a Birmingham gunshop in the aftermath of Waterloo, ever ready should the dastardly Bonaparte escape his island prison and once again incite the French foe.
    The punch line is always the same: The Aladdin’s Cave is rediscovered after some interminable limbo, and the perfectly preserved treasure is brought before delighted and grateful connoisseurs. Most stories of this type are just that—stories—they are either pure make-believe or too seriously compromised to have a happy ending. Take, for example, the Birmingham Brown Bess tale; it turns out that old muskets were discovered in a gun-quarter cellar when the area was destroyed to make way for the inner-ring road in the early 1960s, but after 150 years in a damp British basement, they crumbled to the touch.
      Occasionally, however, such stories resonate with enough truth for us to reinvest in comforting fantasies. Here is one for your consideration. It seems that in 1940, at about the time German paratroopers were landing on Fort Eben-Emael, in eastern Belgium, workers from Liège gunmaker Etablissements Britte were transporting the last of the company’s sporting arms, guns in the white, barreled actions and miscellaneous parts to the owner’s home and hiding them in his cellar. Britte had manufactured military weapons exclusively since 1936, and rather than leave fine sporting guns lying around to be looted by the Wehrmacht, someone decided to hide them.
      Before its Belgian army contracts, Britte had been a gunmaker to the trade. The company delivered high-quality sporting arms in the white to Dumoulin, Auguste Francotte and Lebeau-Courally that were then finished and sold to Continental Europe’s richest sportsmen. Founded as Britte Fréres in 1896 by brothers Théophile and Lambert Britte, who broke with craft tradition and invested heavily in the most sophisticated machine tools available, the firm was an essential element in Liège’s golden age of gunmaking.
      In his 400-page tome Five Centuries of Liège Gunmaking, Claude Gaier devotes an entire chapter to “The Golden Age,” which he defines as lasting from 1814 to 1914. In reality it lasted longer, albeit in a reduced capacity. As late as 1923, Britte continued to expand with financial help from brothers Charles and Ernest Masquelier, who were gun dealers, and Jules Bury, a gunmaker whose best work was held in the same regard as that of Francotte and Lebeau-Courally. They incorporated as Etablissements Britte Atelier de Mecanique de Precision, Armes en Blanc—literally “Britte Manufacturing Workshop for Precision Mechanics of Guns in the White.”
      In 1931 Théophile Britte patented an unusual over/under. Registered in the British patent office on December 28 and assigned No. 374792, it was advertised in the French-speaking world the following year as “Une révélation pour 1932!” And a revelation it was, because it opened sideways. Given the name SuperBritte, derived in part from the French word “superpose,” for a gun with superimposed barrels, it was also a bit special—super even.
      One of the SuperBritte’s outstandingly excellent qualities was its height—or lack thereof. Because no deep U-shaped frame or action was employed, the gun could be built to exactly the height of the barrels, making it the slimmest stackbarrel ever. In conventional O/Us cocking is achieved by the fall of the barrels acting on levers contained in the action body. Because the SuperBritte doesn’t have a conventional action body, this is impossible, so the tumblers are cocked by the opening lever.
      Approximately 250 of these eccentric masterpieces were built by Britte between 1931 and 1936, when the company went into war work. These proved popular with target shots, and Ben Galliger, who it is claimed was on the winning team when the Americans won the International Pigeon Shooting Championships in Spain in 1930, apparently owned one. Sir Allen G. Clark, the American-born industrialist who represented England in DTL (Down the Line) between 1935 and 1950, owned four.
      A later run of about two dozen finished guns were built by Britte when the company was taken over in 1949 by Louis Dessart, the grandson of Théophile Britte. Many were given as presents to Britte’s corporate clients, but some of these may have found their way into the basement cache along with 105 H&H-type actions made by Britte. The entire trove was once again left to gather dust while Dessart concentrated on a high-tolerance manufacturing business beyond gunmaking. Clearly Dessart’s priorities were supplying high-tech defense and aerospace companies such as Fabrique Nationale, but because his grandfather had gone to the trouble of protecting the gun actions with cosmolene, waxed paper and wooden packing crates, they would remain in perfect condition until they were once again unearthed.
      In 1997 Dessart, now of retirement age, sold Britte to his son-in-law, Vincent Pissart. We can only imagine the excitement Pissart felt when he discovered the riches in the Dessart family basement, where they had laid for the most part untouched since 1936.
      In early 1999 the rights to sell some of the existing SuperBrittes and actions in the white were sold to the principals of Auguste Francotte & Cie. In September that year Griffin & Howe, in the US, was sent one of the original SuperBritte barreled actions that had been stocked and finished exclusively for it. Guy Bignell, now President and CEO of G&H, recalls everyone’s reaction: “We all enjoyed the hell out of it,” he said. “As for handling qualities, it was truly appealing—as dynamic as any over/under we’d ever shot. It also was inherently lightweight and much more controllable. A sheer delight in terms of pointability. Our ability to break 23 of 25 targets out of the box with the choke constrictions at Full and Extra Full indicated that this was truly a most versatile sporting shotgun.”
      Little did they know it at the time, but the arrival of that gun would foreshadow a spectacular turn of events. It eventually would take two years, but with the aid of Luc Vander Borght, an influential figure in the Liège gun trade, having worked as the sales and marketing manager for Browning/FN, Gastinne Renette and Francotte, Griffin & Howe was able to acquire the remaining finished SuperBrittes and SuperBritte barreled actions in the white as well as a number of finished H&H-style side-by-sides and barreled actions in the white. As the folks at G&H began taking inventory of the remarkable cache, they began to realize that they had come upon the fine firearms find of the century: what’s come to be known as the Jules Bury Collection, for the name that appeared on most of the finished guns.
       All told, there were 17 finished SuperBritte shotguns and 10 SuperBritte barreled actions in the white. There also were 17 finished Holland & Holland-style sidelock ejector side-by-sides that had been proofed in Liège in the early 1950s, as well as 105 Holland-style barreled actions in the white that had been made between WWI and WWII. All of the finished guns and barreled actions were 12-bores. Five separate pallets contained thousands of spare parts, all of which had been preserved in impeccable condition.
      The Holland-type guns were of course every bit as desirable as the SuperBrittes—and if anything, more iconic. In their book Shotgun Technicana, Shooting Sportsman Contributing Editors David Trevallion and Michael McIntosh lavish praise on the Holland & Holland action, stating that, “If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, no gunmaker in the world should be more flattered than Holland & Holland, because no sidelock action has been so widely copied over the past hundred years than the Holland & Holland Royal . . . .” They then list the myriad English, Spanish and Italian firms that have adopted the “Holland & Holland style” action, explaining, “The reason for this universal appeal is that the Holland system is so simple and relatively easy to make that it accommodates almost every level of manufacturing economics . . . .
      “Mechanically, it’s hard to improve on perfection.”
      Now, thanks to Griffin & Howe, the entire find has been made available to the public. In addition to acquiring the guns and gun parts, G&H also purchased the brand names SuperBritte and Jules Bury.
      According to Bignell: “Within the purchase agreement, Griffin & Howe acquired the name Jules Bury Armurier, Fabrique D’Armes, Maison Fondée en 1840. The name is synonymous with the manufacturing of the finest shotguns and double rifles since 1840. After close inspection of one of the 105 Holland-style barreled actions and a finished gun in our Jules Bury Collection, the head of one of the top three ‘best’ London gunmakers said, ‘This is one of the finest actions I’ve seen, and I would doubt that even we could replicate this type of quality today.’”
      In order to initiate an investment-grade marque, Griffin & Howe introduced the original completed H&H-style sidelock ejectors at $15,000. The guns currently being built by the Belgian firm Verrees & Cie using the 105 Holland-style barreled actions are being offered at slightly more, as they enjoy a higher grade of wood and finish. (Griffin & Howe had the first four matched pairs and six single examples completed by Belgian maker Lebeau-Courally.) A matched pair in inventory is offered cased with accessories at $45,000. In the future guns will be offered by quotation based upon grade of wood, type of engraving and finish. These shotguns represent the finest in Belgian materials and workmanship, with hidden third fasteners, bushed firing pins, articulated front triggers, gold-washed internal parts, and Siemens Martin steel barrels.
      Original finished examples of the side-opening SuperBrittes were offered at $25,000 and sold out completely. The remaining six SuperBritte barreled actions are offered by quotation based upon grade of wood, type of engraving and finish.
According to Bignell, “Once the original completed [Jules Bury] guns and the barreled actions in the white are sold, the opportunity to acquire one of these fine examples of European craftsmanship from a bygone era—custom made and finished to your own specifications—will be lost forever.”
      It may be as Michael McIntosh has written—“a tangled web with a happy ending” and “a story that unfolds like the plot of a Russian novel”—but from their creation, through the time they became war casualties, to their internment and eventual exhumation, the guns of Britte have provided us with an Aladdin’s Cave story worthy of the name.

Author’s Note: For more information about the Jules Bury Collection, contact Griffin & Howe, 908-766-2287 or 203-618-0270; www.griffinhowe.com.

Douglas Tate is an Editor at Large for Shooting Sportsman.