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...
Here is a late romantic bassoon made by the Bavarian master Johann Simon STENGEL (1803-1885), who was the second generation of the STENGEL family, preceded by Johann Samuel Stengel (1771-1826) and followed by Johann Christoph Stengel (1833-1902). We believe this bassoon was made around 1860 and with the wording BREVETÉ...
The surname POTTER is synonymous with instrument making, especially flutes. We tend to think of a certain Richard POTTER (1726-1806), who was the first of three generations of London instrument makers. But there was another family of POTTERS, active in the manufacture of wind instruments and drums, at the same...
Here is an exciting instrument for flute collectors and enthusiasts everywhere. It is a double-wall silver flute made by the maestro Agostino RAMPONE (1843-1897) in Italy. Double-wall metal wind instruments featured a hollow body with two tubes. This innovation was first patented in 1879 in Italy by Agostino Rampone who...
Quarna Sotto beginnings Quarna Sotto is a tiny village hidden way in the forested hills above Lago d’Orta in the Italian Piedmont region. It is where the story of the Rampone family began and still continues today. Long before Agostino Rampone was born, in the early 1800s, Francesco Bonaventura RAMPONE and his...
Giuseppe DONATI (1836-1925) was the ‘inventor’ of the ocarina. His hometown was Budrio in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, about 15 kilometres east of Bologna, where today there is even an ocarina museum. Other makers sprung up and are known as the Budrio makers. They include Ercole MEZZETTI (1841-1918) & Alberto...
This is a fabulous ten-keyed flute made in Vienna in 1851 at the workshop of the family of Stephan KOCH (1772-1828). Stephan Koch made all kinds of woodwind instruments, including bassoons, csakans and clarinets in his workshop in Vienna. However, he is most known for his improvements to the...
This is a nice and typical example of a Cocuswood flute made by the famous Italian-born, turned Englishman, Tebaldo MONZANI (1762-1839). It is a three-piece construction. Two head joints are supplied, rather than just one head joint with a tuning slide. [Tuning slides often...
This sensational conical ring-key flute was fully restored by master woodwind instrument makers. The instrument is crafted in gorgeous Cocuswood with nickel/German silver ring keys and rings. It plays at a pitch of a=440Hz. Furthermore, it was supplied in a brand-new, leather-covered wooden case which...
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!
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.
Roughly serial numbers 1-102 c. 1810, 103-500 c.1811, 501-1000 c. 1814, 1001-1500 c. 1817, 1501-2000 c. 1821
