This E-flat alto clarinet is made of grenadilla wood and has nickel silver keys and rings. Its total length is 810 mm, including the mouthpiece. It was made by V. Kohlert’s Söhne, Graslitz and this is stamped on the upper joint. The Kohlert company was founded in 1840 by Vincenz Ferarius...
A five-keyed B-flat clarinet by the maker Johann Georg STEINER. He lived from 1783 to 1862 and worked as a woodwind instrument maker in Rottenburg am Neckar, which is now Baden Wuerttemberg in Germany. The instrument is made from Boxwood , with brass keys and horn...
This extraordinary F clarinet was made at the workshop of the Uhlmann family in Vienna, Austria. The company was an extremely important manufacturer of woodwind and brass instruments. It supplied the Austrian army and exported worldwide. The founder was Johann Tobias Uhlmann (1776-1838), who started the business in 1810. He...
Here is a delightful, boxwood clarinet in C made by WHITAKER LONDON. According to Waterhouse, William ‘A Dictionary of Musical Wind-Instrument Makers and Inventors’, Whitaker can be traced as an instrument maker between the late 18th century and 1837. Since the signature does not include the addition ‘& Co’,...
This 13-keyed B-flat clarinet is crafted in boxwood, with nickel silver rings and keys. The workmanship is of a very high level and the boxwood has a lovely, aged honey colour. It even has its original case! Giacinto Riva worked in San Giovanni in Persiceto in the province of Bologna, Italy...
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...
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!
