High Tea=High Noon

January 12, 2009 3:25 PM

Among fine manners and fine chinaone must pack tasteful heat.
posted by Stephen Elliott (39 comments total)

a quandary between the pleasure of luxury and violence.

That's not a decision I believe James Bond ever had to make with his PPK.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:33 PM on January 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

You can still pistol-whip someone with it. But you only get to do it once.
posted by Joe Beese at 3:34 PM on January 12 [3 favorites has favorites]

I can't imagine that these would be functional, but I would have really wanted to put one of these on my wedding registry.
posted by Alison at 3:56 PM on January 12

It's a sissy gun.
posted by Burhanistan at 3:58 PM on January 12 [4 favorites has favorites]

As the owner of both a flintlock and a full set of Limoges, this seems like the perfect addition to my collection.

And by collection, I mean the barely-controlled crapfest that is my house.
posted by annaramma at 4:05 PM on January 12

Cool, I don't get it...but cool.
posted by winks007 at 4:06 PM on January 12

I was hoping for it being multiple parts at least. I was kind curious how to rifle a porcelain pistol barrel and I wanted to see the trigger move. As usual, I have sets my sights for the ceramic arts too high.
posted by GuyZero at 4:08 PM on January 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

Mitch Leary would be proud.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 4:10 PM on January 12

Flagged as "Containing Assful of Class."
posted by Uppity Pigeon #2 at 4:16 PM on January 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

And thus began the PorcelainPunk age.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:16 PM on January 12 [3 favorites has favorites]

Red wine with the fish please!
posted by Artw at 4:18 PM on January 12

Burhanistan - better than the berreta.
posted by Artw at 4:18 PM on January 12

Bailey Arms Company.
posted by hortense at 4:22 PM on January 12

You can have my china when you pry it from my cold dead hand!
posted by ...possums at 4:23 PM on January 12

All this wonk about fine china pistols on that site, and you totally missed the chocolate guns?
posted by jkaczor at 4:49 PM on January 12

This is one time you should bring a knife to the gunfight.
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:02 PM on January 12

No.
The guns should be silver with grips to match the flatwear.
How gauche.
posted by Seamus at 5:35 PM on January 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

And thus began the PorcelainPunk age.

"It's like my body's developed this massive tea deficiency." It was a Statfordshire voice, and a Staffordshire joke. The maids porcelein arm tinged rhythmically as he dusted the finely stained mahogany desk. It was an original job from China, not one of the cheap knock-offs would could buy at the docks in Holland from a sketchy Puritan saw bones.
posted by empath at 5:55 PM on January 12 [6 favorites has favorites]

I really wish I had more time to think about that, but it could totally be done.
posted by empath at 6:02 PM on January 12

i was really hoping these were for sale. they wouldn't be that hard to mass-produce
posted by es_de_bah at 6:18 PM on January 12

This is not the first time porcelain weapons have been featured in the Blue. Pistols? Ho hum. Porcelain grenades and submachine guns are where it's at.
posted by mosk at 6:25 PM on January 12 [2 favorites has favorites]

This is the kind of gun my grandma carries. She has a nice cozy holster.
posted by orme at 6:27 PM on January 12

empath - The same trick appears to be a lot harder to pull off with the opening paragraphs of The Difference Engine.
posted by Artw at 6:29 PM on January 12

Do they come with the little wire thingies for wall-mounting?
posted by Sys Rq at 6:56 PM on January 12

that's not tasteful heat ... THIS is tasteful heat!
posted by msconduct at 7:17 PM on January 12

Looks like a bullnose pistol in a china shop.
posted by Ron Thanagar at 8:16 PM on January 12

I wish I had a couple of these at the tea party I hosted last month. As it was, I ended up diving back into the kitchen as the guests rushed the table for the raspberry petit fours.
posted by happyroach at 9:24 PM on January 12

I think this is from a novel, so it may be pure bullshit, but I've read about ceramic guns--special ceramic as strong as steel, but won't trip a metal detector.
posted by zardoz at 10:57 PM on January 12

Are you not thinking of "In the Line of Fire", with Clint Eastwood?
posted by Artw at 11:06 PM on January 12

I don't know about guns, but there's been a lot of engineering effort thrown at ceramic internal combustion engines over the years -- they've been just around the corner for as long as I can remember. The idea being that they wouldn't need cooling systems so they'd be more efficient. But the strength and wear properties are never quite right, and lubricating with conventional oils is a problem with the high temperatures involved. Here's an overview of one approach that would use graphite-like carbon depositing produced by streaming the engine's own exhaust over the wear surfaces.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:12 PM on January 12

flatwear.
How gauche.

Do Not Need. I don't want a "feminized" non-shooting gun, thanks. A toy gun that doesn't even go click or bang? It's to "keep nice," huh? Guns... I feminize them when I shoot them. Such is the intensity of my double-x knockerriffic fatal femminess. They turn you gay if you use them after moi. If you're a lady already you grow a third boob. Yeah.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:43 PM on January 12

The scent and smoke and sweat of a tea shop are nauseating at three in the afternoon.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:56 AM on January 13

Seconding Mosk. It's a neat idea. But it's also an idea that the artist Charles Krafft had first and these are a bit too similar. Perhaps Ms Yvonne Schultz was "inspired by" Mr Krafft's work.
posted by rhymer at 2:28 AM on January 13

My gun is cooler than yours.
posted by zengargoyle at 2:50 AM on January 13

If this were to replace Steampunk, the world would be a better place.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:24 AM on January 13

The film with the porcelain guns is "Die Hard 2": used as an explanation for how they passed the metal detectors (glocks if I remember right).

Not that you could'nt smuggle a real gun onto a plane whilst still having your tweezers and water confiscated.
posted by Saddo at 4:43 AM on January 13

saddo, you're right, I think it's from Die Hard 2. But is it really bullshit?
posted by zardoz at 5:01 AM on January 13

Yup, Die Hard 2, in the early scene at the airport - After the firefight, John McClain tells a cop that "That punk pulled a Glock 7 on me" he goes on to explain that a Glock 7 is a porcelain gun, undetectable by airport scanners, and costs more than the cop makes in a month.

The hype about Glocks exploded in the US thereafter. There is no ceramic Glock. There is no Glock 7. They do contain polymer in the frame and handgrip, but the barrel, slide and trigger assembly are steel - more than 70% of the pistol if I remember correctly (I own one). They are certainly detectable by conventional scanners. Very many modern handguns are now polymer framed.
posted by Nick Verstayne at 6:11 AM on January 13

Ceramic weapons? Psssh, old hat.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 9:46 AM on January 13