Boss
& Co.
From Thomas Boss’s early nineteenth-century London work to the innovations of John Robertson, Boss & Co. developed a reputation for elegant proportions, mechanical ingenuity and uncompromising standards in the making of the Best London gun.
A London house defined
by refinement and invention.
Boss & Co. traces its history to 1812, when Thomas Boss began advertising sporting guns under his own name in London. The firm’s early reputation was built on workmanship and proportion; later generations would add a remarkable sequence of mechanical innovations.
The result was a distinctive Boss identity — light, elegant guns, restrained lines, finely executed engraving and mechanisms developed with the sporting gun’s handling qualities always in mind.
From the London trade to a name of his own.
The Boss family’s connection with gunmaking began with William Boss, who trained in Birmingham before moving to London and working with Joseph Manton. His youngest son, Thomas, continued in the trade and developed a reputation as a skilled gunmaker.
In 1812 Thomas began advertising guns carrying the Boss name. Initially working through the London trade and serving customers directly, he gradually established a business whose reputation rested on the quality of its workmanship.
At the heart of fashionable London.
Boss moved into St James’s Street in the late 1830s, settling at No. 73 in 1839. The address placed the firm among London’s clubs, specialist shops and the clientele who formed the traditional market for a best-quality sporting gun.
Guns were not simply displayed there. The building also housed gunmakers from basement to upper floors, making No. 73 both a shopfront and a working London gunmaking premises for much of the nineteenth century.
Two centuries of Boss & Co.
Selected moments in the development of the house, from Thomas Boss to the innovations that transformed its reputation around the world.
The period that reshaped Boss & Co.
John Robertson brought a gunmaker’s technical mind to the ownership of Boss & Co. After joining the firm in 1890, he became sole owner in 1893 and used the business as a platform for a series of ideas that would become inseparable from the Boss name.
The single trigger, the Boss ejector and the celebrated over-and-under all emerged from this period. Robertson also presided over the development of the firm’s characteristic Rose & Scroll engraving, executed by engraver John Sumner.
- Boss Single Trigger
- Boss Ejector
- Boss Over-and-Under
- Rose & Scroll Engraving
An enduring British design.
Over-and-under guns existed before Boss introduced its version, but Robertson’s 1909 design approached the form with the proportions and handling qualities associated with the best English sporting gun.
The action was notably slender and the barrels sat low in relation to the hands. Its flowing lines gave the gun an appearance quite unlike the heavier over-and-under designs then commonly encountered.
That combination of mechanical ingenuity and visual restraint made the Boss over-and-under one of the most recognisable designs in British gunmaking.
A house recognised by its proportions.
Boss & Co.’s importance in British gunmaking rests on more than age. The firm’s most influential period produced mechanisms and forms that helped define the mature sporting gun: a dependable single trigger, compact ejector work, distinctive engraving and an over-and-under whose elegance became a benchmark of its type.
Through changes of generation and address, the Boss name retained a reputation for limited production and exacting hand work — an approach captured by the firm’s long-standing emphasis on making best-quality sporting guns.
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