This French flageolet was made by Frédéric Eléanor GODFROY. He was born in 1805 in Paris and was the eldest son of Clair Godfroy (1774-1841). He was a woodwind instrument maker from 1827 to 1844. The GODFROY family was active in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were initially in...
This is a 10-keyed flute by the famous Bavarian maker STENGEL, Johann Simon made around 1850 from Boxwood with brass keys and horn rings. The flute has the typical features of a ‘romantic’ flute, with a tuning slide, low B-flat key and even a high trill key. Its total length is...
A four-keyed boxwood flute created by the Englishman Robert WOLF (1808-1844), pitched at around a=440 Hz. Robert Wolf & Co was active between 1837 and 1845. Originally registered at 79, Cornhill, the company moved to 20, St. Martin’s Le Grand and worked from there between 1843 and 1845. From 1846,...
A five-keyed C clarinet by the English maker Zenas Trivett PURDAY (1792-1866). He was the son of Thomas PURDAY (1765-1838) of Purday & Button, a music publishing house for mainly sacred vocal music. Zenas Trivett Purday had two brothers: a rival publisher and instrument maker Thomas Edward PURDAY (1971-1873) and...
The STENGEL family and Bayreuth The Stengel family had a woodwind instrument business for almost a century in the German town of Bayreuth or Baireuth. Bayreuth is located in the north of Bavaria, on the Red Main river. Its roots go back to 1194. It is very famous, among other things,...
This spectacular and rare flute was made by George Leonhard LINTNER (1794-1859), who was trained and licensed as both a brass and woodwind instrument maker – very rare at the time. He worked with his father, Johann Georg LINTNER, originally from Tyrnau in Slovakia, in their hometown of Augsburg in...
In the 19th century, several inventors patented ideas to enable the flute to be played vertically. This meant that the flute is held vertically, but blown transversely. Enter the fascinating ‘Giorgi’ flute! The Giorgi flute was an 11-hole keyless flute to which keys could be furnished if required. The instrument...
The beginnings in Germany and move to Strasbourg Julius Max BÜRGER was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany on 21 April, 1844. He completed a total of twelve years as an apprentice and journeyman in several woodwind instrument workshops across Europe. This training included some work in Munich for Boehm &...
Ebony, Diospyros ebenum or Ceylon ebony is a hard, dry, brittle wood with a very low oil and resin content. The wood is so dense it can even sink in water. Many (even the occasional flute-maker!) find it quite difficult to distinguish ebony from grenadilla (African blackwood). However, ebony is,...
The terms Fragonard Courting Couple or Fragonard Love Story refer to a motif inspired by the work of the French artist, Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806). Fragonard, born in Grasse, on the now French Riviera, was a painter and printmaker from the Rococo (Roccoco or Late Baroque) movement and later Neoclassical...
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!
Unicorns have become all the rage over recent years and we are often confronted in our daily lives with unicorns in the form of cartoons, cuddly toys, pencil cases, hairbands and even inflatable pool loungers. A unicorn is a beast that typically looks like a horse and has one single, pointed horn that spirals out from its forehead. Unicorns were a symbol of purity and grace. The appeal of these very special, mythical creatures has never ceased over time. As a symbol of magic, rarity and specialness, they didn’t go unnoticed by flute makers either.
Ebonite was invented in 1839 by Charles Goodyear. He found that he could obtain a black material, which was rigid rather than elastic, by mixing together and heating latex and sulphur. The result was a hard rubber and it was given the name ebonite because both the colour and consistency were very similar to ebony (heartwood).
Ebonite would go on to be used in the manufacture of many objects including high-quality fountain pens, bowling balls, clocks, electrical insulating material or saxophone and clarinet mouthpieces.
Ebonite was also employed as an alternative material for making flute bodies. It seems it was first used in flute making in the mid-1800s by New-York-based Alfred G. Badger and other makers followed suit. It was thought to be very advantageous as a material because it did not absorb water, was durable and difficult to break. It was also a bad conductor of heat which meant that alterations in air temperature would not affect the pitch of the flute.
The famous ‘Giorgi Flute’ was made entirely of ebonite (with metal rings) rather than wood by the London firm Joseph WALLIS & Son Limited in around 1900. It was not only constructed in this new hard rubber material, but had no keys!
