Here we have a jewel of silver flutes… which is also extremely rare! It was made by Ernst Robert LEIBL (1871-1957), who took over the famous Boehm & Mendler workshop in 1903. He continued to construct his instruments in exactly the same manner. It is estimated that LEIBL only made around...
This lovely, Romantic flute was made around 1840 by the master woodwind instrument maker, Christian Wilhelm LIEBEL (1793-1871). Wilhelm, as he preferred to call himself, was one of Dresden’s finest flute makers during the mid-nineteenth century. Born in Adorf and initially trained by his father, Liebel spent his journeyman...
This cocuswood flute was made by the master himself – Louis LOT (1807-96). By checking the serial number 1889, we can date this flute to 1874. All three sections of the instrument are stamped with the Louis Lot stamp, plus the serial number. This proves that the parts of the instrument all...
This Luigi VANOTTI flute, including its mechanism, is made of solid 900 silver – evidenced by its hallmarks. It was made around 1910. Luigi Vanotti worked for the company Rampone & Cazzani before setting up his own business in 1909 in Milan, at Via Solferino 46. He specialised in...
Luigi VANOTTI worked for the company Rampone & Cazzani before setting up his own business in 1909 in Milan, at Via Solferino 46. He specialised in making Boehm flutes, but also constructed several non-standard experimental models. He was clearly an innovator. One innovation was the Albisiphon, which he built and...
This beautiful Louis LOT cocuswood, conical ring-key flute is in playing condition. It was made shortly after Louis Lot had retired and the company was under the ownership of Honoré Désiré VILLETTE – Lot’s first successor. Villette was born on 20.04.1827 in Sorel Moussel – a small village about 10 kilometres...
The surname HEIDEGGER is synonymous with instrument making in Passau and Linz. The family’s instrument-making history begins in the 1840s and ceases over 130 years later in 1973. Their story is not unlike other instrument makers of those days…difficult, complicated but for many, very interesting, especially since in this case,...
Louis-Maurice KASRIEL (1815-1899) was a musical instrument maker who was born in Krotoschin, Prussia – today's Krotoszyn in Poland. In 1839, he started a company in Paris that would specialise in making harmoniums, harmoniflutes and guide-chants. Louis Maurice Kasriel was married to Sara KAHN. The company was awarded medals for...
This third flute was made by the Bavarian maker Johann Samuel STENGEL (1771-1826). Johann Samuel was the first in a generation of woodwind instrument makers in the business for around 100 years in total. Johann Samuel was born in 1771 in Döhlau/Hof (about 60 kms from Bayreuth) and was...
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...
Open/closed G-sharp key
The open G-sharp key was promoted by Theobald Boehm. So, G-sharp is fingered like a G on the modern-day flute and G is fingered like the modern-day G-sharp. The open G-sharp key mechanism avoids having an additional second G-sharp tone hole, which is not optimal in acoustical terms.
The closed G-sharp key is the regular mechanism on modern day instruments as well as traditional conical wooden more-keyed flutes. G-sharp is obtained by pressing the G-sharp lever. G is produced by pressing down all four fingers of the left hand.
Theobald Boehm’s open G-sharp was not successful in the end and is no longer used in flute-making, with some exceptions.
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!
