Extraordinary! This just about sums up the revised second edition of John Griffiths’ Encyclopedia of Spring Air Pistols.
The first edition of this book was a magnificent labour of love that brought together virtually all the known information about these airguns, which have been made all over the world now for over 200 years. But it had the small drawback that the most of the illustrations were in black and white.
This new edition doesn’t suffer from this handicap. It’s in glorious full colour throughout, all 500 pages of it. It makes a huge difference somehow, having it in colour, making it a total pleasure to leaf through the carefully written pages.
The book is divided into six chapters: 80% of it covers 150-odd years of commercialised spring air pistols. The rest covers pre-1900 handmade pistols, non-commercial, unknown pistols and unrealised patent designs, plus spring air pistols in galleries and games.
As John says in his introduction, the Internet has many advantages but a profound disadvantage is that websites have a nasty habit of disappearing, along with all the information they hold. Whereas books will go on for centuries.
Pretty much every major airgun collector in the world seems to have opened their doors to John and supplied data and pics, plus the author has scoured the world for any sign of these guns.
I can’t emphasise enough how important it is for collectors to have this book in their libraries. It’ll set you back £55 plus £12 p&p, but it’s massive and the information within is pretty much priceless.
Almost certainly, future generations won’t have the advantage we have of a researcher of John’s calibre in our midst whose interest in airguns is sufficient to drive him to produce this amazing work. We’ll be very lucky to see his like again. If only he had the same interest in spring air rifles!
PS I have no financial interest in this book whatsoever.
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