For $30,000, British Firm Will Build You One--in 2 Years : To Shotgun Lovers, a Purdey Is No. 1
Along with tailored suits and custom-made shoes, a yacht, a country estate and a luxury car to get there, one more thing is needed to outfit the complete English gentleman or woman--a hand-built shotgun.
The starting price for a Purdey, considered by many to be the ultimate in shotguns, is currently $30,000. Delivery time: between 2 and 2 1/2 years.
“Some of our customers buy pairs,” said Richard Beaumont, head of James Purdey & Sons, who have been supplying guns to royalty, aristocrats and the rich since 1814.
Purdeys--perfectly balanced, with finger-light touch and exquisite finish--are lovingly built by hand.
“We still build our guns much the same as we did in 1814--by hand. There are no machined parts,” Beaumont said.
He was talking in the wood-panelled Long Room at Purdey’s London Mayfair headquarters, where customers are sized up for their guns, which are quite as individual as a tailored suit.
Their arm and neck measurements are taken and eyesight tested for alignment of stock and barrel so that the finished gun fits and fires perfectly when brought to the shoulder.
Aim Checked
The customer’s aim is checked with a weapon of the type first developed for Britain’s King George V for use indoors to help him keep his form after a serious illness in 1928-29.
It’s an electric gun that, when fired, projects a light beam at its target.
“This is particularly helpful with our older customers,” Beaumont said.
“As people get older, their left eye gets much stronger than their right eye. They tend not to believe this, but with the electric gun they see exactly what’s happening to their aim.”
Purdey’s is steeped in tradition. Beaumont sees it as one of those institutions that make Britain still distinctive in an age of mass production.
Portraits of the Purdey family, whose members maintained an unbroken link with the business until 1957, hang in the Long Room alongside pictures of customers--royal and common, past and present.
One photograph groups nine European kings who attended the funeral of Britain’s King Edward VII in 1910. All owned Purdeys.
A picture of Prince Charles, said to have been discouraged from hunting by his wife Princess Diana, stands on a desk at the end of the Long Room.
“I can’t talk about our royal customers, you know,” Beaumont said.
American Customers Common
Many of Purdey’s customers today are Americans.
Beaumont estimated that 65% of those taking delivery of their precious guns this year were from the United States.
North Americans generally prefer the over-and-under gun, which places the twin barrels on top of each other rather than side by side. Starting price for this variation--$38,000.
He is modest about his firm and refuses to knock its main British rivals--Boss and Holland & Holland, two other old, established gun makers.
But the name Purdey, like Rolls-Royce, has a magic of its own.
“Anybody who knows anything about guns will have heard the name Purdey,” Christie’s hunting rifle expert, Christopher Brunker, said. He said Boss has a very much smaller production, and Holland & Holland makes a much wider range.
“But as soon as somebody says ‘I’ve got a Purdey’, you know what he’s got. In marketing terms, we’re talking about the very best grade,” he said.
Brunker said that even at their high prices, Purdeys have proved to be good investments.
