This clarinet in C was made at the STENGEL workshop in Bayreuth, Germany. We think it was made around 1850-1860 by Johann Simon STENGEL (1803-1885). It features 12 brass keys mounted on nicely selected boxwood. The rings are also made of brass. All parts feature the maker’s stamp. This instrument is...
This extremely rare instrument was made at the famous STENGEL workshop in Bayreuth, Germany by the woodwind master Johann Simon STENGEL (1803-1885) A similar instrument can be found in the Sir Nicholas Shackleton (1937-2006) collection at Edinburgh University. This particular instrument could even be earlier than the one at Edinburgh...
Here is a lovely four-part Romantic flute in its original case by the Bavarian master Johann Simon STENGEL (1803-1885). Listen to this flute playing Kaspar KUMMER’s (1795-1870) Etude mélodique op.110 n° 4. The flute exhibits a high level of craftsmanship, featuring beautifully made nickel silver rings. The tenon sockets are also inlaid...
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...
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 (patented)...
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...
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,...
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!
