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...
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...
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...
This elegant, German, Boxwood flute has ivory rings and a single brass key. We can date it to the late eighteenth century… perhaps around 1780. It was made by HAMICH. But who was HAMICH?A trawl through the New Langwill Index gives us quite a few matches… but it’s all rather...
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...
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...
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!
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.
