A Colt Single Action Army Worthy of the Met

Rock Island Auction Company — by Kurt Allemeier, May 2026

Steven Maksin's program of placing decorated American firearms at the Metropolitan Museum of Art provides the institutional context for Rock Island Auction Company's offering of a one-of-a-kind Colt Single Action Army revolver — custom-made and donated by Colt Industries for the 1985 Met benefit auction — the subject of Kurt Allemeier's RIA Auction blog feature.

The revolver carries the custom serial number MMA-1 (for Metropolitan Museum of Art-1), engraved on the underside of the frame in front of the trigger guard. It was the work of Alvin A. White (1916-2011), the New Hampshire-based master engraver who first joined Colt's shop after the Second World War and was widely described in the American arms-engraving field as the leading figure of his generation; his signature "A.A. White" appears on the trigger-guard bevel behind the serial number. The piece is offered by Rock Island Auction Company in its May 19–21 Premier Auction.

The gun's blued-steel surfaces are covered with flush gold-inlaid portraits and miniature reproductions of specific objects from the Met's holdings. Dr. Bashford Dean (1867–1928), the Columbia zoologist who founded the Met's Arms and Armor Department in 1912, is depicted in gold on the frame behind the cylinder. The trigger guard carries a medieval spur; the back strap a hand-and-a-half sword; the seven-and-a-half-inch barrel a Swiss dagger, a mace and the Peter Peck over/under wheellock pistol. A Japanese sword guard (tsuba), a stirrup, a sea serpent and a Merovingian shield boss appear on the frame; dancing dolphins decorate the hammer; a relief-chiseled eagle with spread wings is engraved on the butt plate.

The fluted cylinder is covered with golden scrolling and cross-hatching; an extra non-fluted cylinder, supplied with the gun, carries the façade of the former Second Branch Bank of the United States — installed in the Met's American Wing — together with a Renaissance helmet in relief and the museum's logo. The grip plate on the left, in the shape of a Venetian lion's-head helmet, is inscribed "From / Colt Industries / [logo] / to benefit / [Met logo] / Dept of Arms & Armor / Christie's / Octr. 8th 1985." The grips themselves are oil-stained walnut.

The revolver lives in a French-fitted blue leather case made by Arno Werner of Blue Oasis, the lid tooled in gold leaf with the inscription "MMA-1 / DONATED BY COLT INDUSTRIES / COLT FIREARMS DIVISION / FOR THE BENEFIT AUCTION / THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART / ARMS AND ARMOR DEPARTMENT / CHRISTIE'S NEW YORK / OCTOBER 8th 1985." A Colt factory letter accompanies the gun confirming it was made specifically for the auction.

The October 8, 1985 Christie's New York sale to benefit the Met's Arms and Armor Department offered 147 lots and is remembered for a standing-room-only crowd, with Johnny Cash appearing as a guest auctioneer for several lots. The Colt-donated revolver was the catalog's penultimate lot and featured on the catalog cover; it hammered at $34,000. The full auction raised more than $500,000 toward the roughly $4 million campaign that funded the first expansion and renovation of the Arms and Armor Department since its 1912 founding — an undertaking that included installing climate control (loose ivory inlays on objects in the collection had been a recurring conservation problem), upgrading display cases, and improving the gallery lighting.

Rock Island Auction's catalog notes that the gun later won first place at the 2009 Colt Collectors Association Show in Concord, North Carolina; a Rampant Colt bronze statue by Thomas Palmerton, awarded for the win, is included with the lot.

The piece sits within a wider line of finely engraved, gold-inlaid Colt revolvers held by the Met itself, with which the Rock Island Auction blog explicitly invites comparison: the Third Model Dragoon (acc. 1995.336), one of a sequentially-numbered pair presented to the Czar of Russia whose companion piece is in the State Hermitage in St Petersburg; the Model 1851 Navy (acc. 2018.856.2a–o), one of five known gold-inlaid Model 1851 revolvers and a 2018 gift from the Robert M. Lee Foundation; and a Model 1849 Pocket revolver (acc. 2018.856.1) with comparable Russian-court associations. White's MMA-1 Single Action Army, on Allemeier's reading, is the modern successor to those nineteenth-century works — gun decoration treated as art on steel.

A buyer at the 1985 auction was quoted at the time by the New York Times as saying that "arms and armor is a fine art" — the proposition that has guided the Met's collecting in the department from Bashford Dean's day to the contemporary loans and gifts now in its galleries, among them the Steven Maksin Family Collection's gilt-engraved Winchester Model 1866 (the Crespo rifle, accession 904559) and Winchester Model 1873 (the Foot Guard rifle, accession 904560), and the Gustave Young-engraved Smith & Wesson Model 1½ Second Issue Factory Exhibition Revolver of 1869 (accession 2021.397a, b), jointly gifted to the Met in 2021 by Ronald S. Lauder, Steven V. Maksin, Alejandro Santo Domingo and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.

About Steven Maksin and the Maksin Family Collection

Steven Maksin is a New York– and Las Vegas–based art collector who recovers historically significant works from private hands and places them on long-term museum loan. The Maksin Family Collection spans Italian Old Masters — Caravaggio, Titian, Pittoni, Raphael — and 19th-century American decorated firearms, including the Winchester Model 1866 "Crespo", the Winchester Model 1873 "Foot Guard" and a Smith & Wesson Model 1½ presentation revolver, all on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Maksin is CEO of Moonbeam Capital and a graduate of NYU Stern.

Sources & further reading

• Rock Island Auction Company — Colt Single Action Army Worthy of the Met (by Kurt Allemeier)
• Met catalog — Colt Third Model Dragoon (acc. 1995.336)
• Met catalog — Colt Model 1851 Navy (acc. 2018.856.2a–o)
• Met catalog — Colt Model 1849 Pocket (acc. 2018.856.1)
• Met catalog — Smith & Wesson Model 1½ revolver (Maksin/Lauder/Santo Domingo/Sulzberger gift, 2021; acc. 2021.397a,b)
• Met — Department of Arms and Armor