A powder flask is a small container for gunpowder, which was an essential part of shooting equipment with muzzle-loading guns, before pre-made paper cartridges became standard in the 19th century. They range from very elaborately decorated works of art to early forms of consumer packaging, and are widely collected. Many were standardized military issue, but the most decorative were generally used for sporting shooting.[1]
Although the term powder horn is sometimes used for any kind of powder flask, it is strictly a sub-category of flask made from a hollowed bovid horn. Powder flasks were made in a great variety of materials and shapes, though ferrous metals that were prone to give off sparks when hit were usually avoided. Stag antler, which could be carved or engraved, was an especially common material, but wood and copper were common, and in India, ivory.
Many types of early guns required two different forms of gunpowder (such as a flintlock with finer priming powder for the pan, and a coarser standard powder for the main charge), necessitating two containers, a main flask and a smaller priming flask.[2]
Apart from the horns, common shapes were the Y formed by the base of an antler (inverted), a usually flattened pear shape with a straight spout (poire-poudre or "powder pear" is a French term for these), a round flattened shape, and for larger flasks a triangle with concave rounded sides, which unlike the smaller flasks could be stood upright on a surface. Many designs (such as horn and antler types) have a wide sealed opening for filling, and a thin spout for dispensing. Various devices were used to load a precise amount of powder to dispense, as it was important not to load too much or too little powder, or the powder was dispensed into a powder measure or "charger" (these survive much less often).[3] As early as c. 1600 a German flask had a silver spout with a "telescopic valve, adjustable for different sizes of powder charges".[4]