Does nickel silver really contain silver? The simple answer is ‘No’. It’s a copper alloy that normally contains about 60% copper, 20% nickel and 20% zinc. It is called nickel silver because it does really look like silver in terms of colour and shininess. Sterling silver, in contrast, is an...
Lot’s beginningsThere’s not really a ‘lot’ [sorry ?] that we can add to the literature about Monsieur Louis Esprit LOT (1807-96), who was the preeminent French flute maker of the late nineteenth century.Louis Esprit Lot was born on 17 May 1807 in La Couture, which is situated in northern France,...
This spectacular, naturally figured, boxwood romantic flute was made by the woodwind and brass instrument maker, Anton KRAUS (1813-1901).Anton KRAUS was born in 1813 in Eger which was the German name for the town of Cheb in the Czech Republic. He started working for the bassoon maker Wenzel HORAK in...
Bad Urach is a beautiful spa town in the Swabian Alb, about 50 kilometres from Stuttgart in Baden Württemberg, Germany. The town is famous as a health resort with mineral thermal water for treating different illnesses. It features lovely old streets with beautiful half-timbered houses in excellent historical condition –...
If you love early flutes, then you must have heard of the great Romantic flute maker, Wilhelm LIEBEL. (Christian) Wilhelm LIEBEL was born in Adorf on 2 November 1793. He was initially trained to make instruments by his father Johann Gottfried LIEBEL (1752-1822) in their home town. Wilhelm continued his...
This extremely rare silent gravity metronome in metal is signed on the front “PATENTED / BREVETE”. On the back it reads “DRP / 350358”. [D.R.P. - Deutsches Reichspatent]. The DRP, or German empire patent, was a patent, assigned from 1877 until 1945. This patent number was assigned in the year...
An 8-keyed flute by the London maker Josiah BLACKMAN (1819-1886), made from Cocuswood with nickel silver keys, finger hole bushings and rings. The rings are beautifully decorated with the Guilloché technique … also called rose engine turning. This technique is rarely found with flutes. The original pewter plugs found in the foot...
It is known that towards the end of the eighteenth century, flutes with eight keys, or double and alternate keyed flutes were preferred among musicians. Yet things were to change drastically with the Theobald BOEHM (1794-1881)1832 invention – the conical ring-key flute. Sadly, it was to become a beautiful instrument...
A four-part, boxwood flute by Martin METZLER (ca. 1755-1809), who made this instrument around the turn of the eighteenth century.Very little is known about Martin Metzler and his time in London. We do know that he rented dwellings in the area of Norton Folgate until about 1788. Martin Metzler was...
Stephan KOCH was born in Veszprém in Hungary on 12 April 1772. He was the son of the master turner, Christoph Koch and his wife Elisabetha. Stephan married Antonia Trost on 17 November 1799 and went on to have at least seven children.It seems that Stephan learnt the turning trade...
Cocuswood is the very dense hardwood of a Caribbean flowering tree called the ‘Brya ebenus’.
‘Brya ebenus’ belongs to the pea family ‘Fabaceae’ and is native to the Caribbean islands of Jamaica and Cuba. It also goes by the quite romantic name of Jamaica Rain Tree because it blossoms bright yellow-orange flowers right after it rains.
Cocuswood’s lovely medium to dark reddish-brown colour is further enhanced with dark blackish streaks. With time, its colour darkens. The grain of cocuswood tends to be straight or a bit wavy. It has a wonderful natural lustre and a fine, even texture.
So absolutely nothing to do with coconuts or coconut trees at all! Really!
With its amazing density, hardness and colour, it’s no wonder that this wood was considered to be one of the very best tonewoods and was widely used in the manufacture of woodwind instruments in the 1800s. It was an exotic, tropical alternative to woods such as boxwood, which were widely used at the time. Flutes, oboes and bagpipes were crafted in cocuswood as well as other items such as carvings or inlays.
Back then cocuswood was all the rage and sadly, due to this previous over-exploitation and the small size of its natural habitat, this wonderful natural resource has been commercially exhausted. So, it is not a protected species, but extremely expensive and difficult to source – making it a very special wood indeed.
Guilloché or guilloche is a craft that was developed over 300 years ago. Guilloché is a special pattern that is created using various overlapping or interlaced lines. To guilloche means then to mechanically engrave guilloches on an underlying material using pressure. This was done using a special lathe by guillocheurs. The special lathe machines can be rose engines, straight-line engines or brocading machines. By using a mechanical technique, greater precision, delicacy and speed can be achieved.
The origin of the first guilloché machines is not entirely clear. Some claim they were Swiss, while others say they were invented by a Frenchman – an engineer called Guillot. Whatever the case, it was introduced into watchmaking back in 1786. It was then that Abraham-Louis Breguet began using the techniques for decorating the cases and dials of the pocket watches he made. Then Peter Carl Fabergé was responsible for making this technique popular in the 19th century with the iconic eggs that came from his manufacturing.
The machines themselves are extremely expensive and rare nowadays and so are the guillocheurs, with very few places offering training in this artisan technique. Guilloché still survives however. Perhaps this is because CNC machines and computers don’t seem to deliver the same cutting quality and refraction of light.
Maybe there will be a guilloché revival, especially in jewellery for example, where people are always looking for a handmade special and unique item. Until then, we can just wonder at the exquisite results of this age-old technique.
Boxwood is a lovely wood and it’s hardly surprising that it remains quite a favourite among today’s woodwind instrument makers. Buxus sempervirens, known as European boxwood, or common boxwood, is a species of flowering plant. It is an evergreen bush really, rather than a tree. It takes a long time to grow and it is difficult to find completely straight trunks without knots to use for items such as flutes.
Boxwood has a uniform grain and is very dense and hard, which is why it was so popular for wood turning and instrument making in the 18th century. At that time many instruments were predominantly made from boxwood. Then several tropical hardwoods became popular during the 1800s as tonewood. People wanted to have furniture and also instruments made from exotic types of wood. So, boxwood lost ground to these newcomers to Europe.
There were also some disadvantages to boxwood: its tendency to warp and easily soil. This led to the ‘banana’ effect with flutes for example, as the wood warped over time.
The wood is naturally yellow in colour and can be left with a natural, polished finished. Boxwood then darkens over time to have a nice honey-yellow colour. It can also be stained using acid staining to give it an orange-brown or dark-brown colour, and in wooden flute construction, many makers use a violin varnish for the finish. This is an extremely arduous technique that requires expertise and precision.
Sadly, since around 2006, the spread of the box tree moth called the Cydalima perspectalis has led to huge losses of boxwood ‘trees’ that have taken hundreds of years to grow. It was sad to see forests of boxwood reduced to almost nothing.
Now it’s very rare and wonderful to see just one full grown 100+ year boxwood tree. So, when that happens – some people just can’t resist and have to hug it!
