Andrey Chokhov

He worked in Moscow at the Cannon Yard for more than 40 years, where he was responsible for casting many heavy weapons.

Andrey Chokhov was born in about 1545, and entered the teaching of the well-known master cannon caster Kashpir Ganusov at a very young age, and stood out from the mass of Ganusov's students who performed regular work.

[1] Andrey Chokhov began his career at the Cannon yard in Moscow during the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 1550s as an apprentice to a German (?)

In the 1570s, Chokhov became one of the leading Muscovite casters and supervised production of heavy battering weapons, such as siege arquebus Лисица (Vixen) and battering ram Собака (Dog) (both made in 1575), big cannon Волк (Wolf; 1576-1577), and a colossal arquebus Инрог (Unicorn), which would become the largest cannon of the Russian siege artillery (1577; weight - 7,134 kg; displayed in St. Petersburg).

In 1586, Andrey Chokhov founded his famous Tsar Cannon (Царь-пушка), a masterpiece of the casting art of the second half of the 16th century.