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RUDALL CARTE Ebonite Restoration - a work in progress

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 19:51:20 GMT

20 April 2026: After several months we are finally (almost) ready to let this flute sing again!

For our latest project we chose to restore a complete, original, but worn Rudall Carte, a flute that deserved to be brought back to as-new playing condition. This flute was made by one of the great Rudall Carte craftsmen, Henri Nivarlet, so we could be certain that when it left his hands 120 years ago it was wonderful.

We were particularly interested in restoring this flute because its body is made from ebonite. At the time it was made ebonite was considered an excellent flutemaking material not only for its warm yet direct sound, but also because it can resist changes in heat and humidity without cracking. In our modern world of heatwaves, central heating, and air conditioning we believe ebonite's qualities make it a valuable alternative to wood.

Firstly we removed all keys from the tubing and repaired as necessary. We converted the five fingered keycups to open-hole and turned Delrin grommets on our lathe. Then we fitted all the keys to either new silver tubing or replacement original Rudall Carte silver tubing. Much of this was silver soldered for extra strength (originally it was lead soldered, and these joints can deteriorate with age). In remaking the mechanism we were able to eliminate all play so the keys feel immediate and reliable under the fingers, and the player can have complete confidence in the flute.

As on most Cartes, the RH touch operated the thumb key. We converted this to work the Bb, which would have been an original option so not historically inaccurate.

Once all the keywork was ready we reassembled it and began fitting it out. The new pads are now in place and we about to move on to the last few jobs of fitting all new springs, corks, and regulating shims. So, after several months, we are keenly working towards that marvellous moment when we can play the flute for the first time in its newly-restored condition.

Once we have fitted out, regulated, and oiled the mechanism, we will finally be able to hear the flute's voice. Then will come the gradual playing-in of new pads and connections as the flute comes to life once again.

20 April 2026

Assessment of prototype Silver Underlip Insert Headjoints, by Richard Craig

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 21:23:21 GMT

Our silver underlip insert headjoints were developed in collaboration with Richard Craig. The initial idea was Richard's, with the aim of providing crisper articulation without losing any of the wood's sound. We expected this particularly to benefit softer woods such as Boxwood and Mopane. The insert would also give a feel of the silver's position under the lip.

In fact we found the Grenadilla also moved to a new area of complexity. We therefore sent two prototypes to Richard for his assessment, one in Boxwood, the other in Grenadilla.

I played both headjoints on a silver Altus and when it comes to first impressions they both have a clear articulation to them and feel reliable. Articulation can be something of a mystery on wood, I have found, but I sense that the silver inserts have somehow honed the airspeed to facilitate a quicker response. Both headjoints have clearer articulation, but avoid that thin reedy tone that the silver leading edge inserts seem to make.

The lower registers are easier to keep in tune when playing quietly, and the higher, more delicate, sounds have the right resistance. There is somehow more stability to the airflow so diminuendi and quiet dynamics are very easy. There is a bit more consistency or quicker feedback in comparison to the 100% wood variety, but I suspect that might be as much to do with the material of silver not being porous and reflecting the airflow evenly.

It is interesting too that the variation between these headjoints and how they respond is not as distinct as it can be with a completely wooden specimen. The insert does even out certain quirks. Both respond really well in the upper register too - a pp feels stable and has some resistance to it.

I really like the combination of the silver-insert boxwood headjoint on my Altus. The boxwood is very light (and the addition of the silver on the plate provides a good counterbalance to the other end of the flute). The sound is very open and the articulation clear. The lightness of the wood made it easy to create those sought-after hollow sounds, whilst it easily changed gear into a much more colourful animal. It really was a lot of fun to play on this, and I would suspect that the newcomers to wood would like this variation of wood and metal. The pitching was even and the lower octaves had plenty of colour to them, with a sense that you were always aware of the airstream and where it was aimed. The boxwood suits the lighter sound of the Altus, and it can provide a bit of welly when the player wants it too. A very enjoyable and responsive headjoint.

The Grenadilla headjoint with silver inset has a lot more complexity for the discerning player - you get a sense of feedback as to how far you have to go before things are being pushed too hard, and it works very well in the second/third register with plenty of harmonics to work with. It is a rounder sound too, I feel. I got the sense that the low register was opening up without me going turbo on it.

So, all in all, they are both a real hoot to play on. If I had to choose I would struggle to decide which to buy!

Dr Richard Craig

https://richardcraig.net/

Assessment of prototype S3 embouchure cut, by Richard Craig

Tue, 28 Nov 2023 11:09:51 GMT

We developed our latest S3 cut headjoints in collaboration with Richard Craig. The idea was to combine and build on the best elements of our classic and free-blowing cuts. Richard assessed a prototype in Grenadilla on both silver and wooden flutes.

S3 on Altus 807

On the Altus, the S3 was a very good match. The upper register became nicer compared with the metal Altus headjoint, helped by the additional resistance that wood provides. When giving it a bit more oomph there was something to work against, which is valuable since typically silver flutes tend to play sharp in the third register. The S3 has the right amount of zapp, with a depth to the sound, to overcome the clunkiness often associated with the combination of wood on a silver flute.

Articulation was very good, with that wooden bounce and roundness to the sound. Intonation between octaves feels sure, and in the lower register there is some wiggle room to adjust. The balance of the weight between the body and head works well too.

In short, I could imagine using this headjoint regularly on an Altus or similar silver flute.

S3 on wooden Rudall Carte

This was really a lot of fun. I could get a lot out of the lower octave, and there was a clearer sense of connection between the lower and mid-range of the flute. Intonation was very good.

The S3 has plenty to give in terms of volume, but provides enough pushback to know the limits. One thing I noticed is a consistent centre to the sound when changing colour from a darker to a lighter tone, something I often miss. I enjoyed the sweetness of the middle register. Changing quickly between registers from piano to forte was very slick indeed, with the pianissimo playing at the top particularly pure.

The articulation had a ring to it, lots of variety, and spoke easily - I am sure there is more to find in this department.

Conclusion

The S3 brought out new sides to both my wooden and silver flutes, without losing the point of playing on wood. Tested alongside wooden headjoints by other makers, the S3 finds a middle way and takes that to a new level.

Dr Richard Craig

https://richardcraig.net/

British Flutemakers: Angus Harris

Sat, 23 Apr 2022 12:28:13 GMT

Roger 'Angus' Harris: A Rudall Carte Flutemaker

Angus moved on to repairing flutes and other instruments, including bassoons. In 1949 he left for on national service, and returned in 1951. Rudall Carte shortened his apprenticeship, no doubt because he had progressed so quickly, and after one year’s ‘improver’ was accepted full time.

The next apprentice to be employed, Roger Charters, remembers Angus as “a lovely lad... with a phenomenal memory. For instance, when it was his turn to go out to the cafe to fetch lunch for everyone he would remember the orders perfectly, whereas if I didn’t write them down I’d get it wrong. And he was a very good flute player. He played in the Lloyds Orchestra in the City of London.” Angus was in fact such a fine flautist that his father took him for an audition at the Royal College of Music, though for whatever reason he continued his apprenticeship.

Like his father, Angus played the 1867-Patent system, and the foreman and other craftsmen were only too pleased to give him any work that came in on such a difficult mechanism. One day the foreman sent him to a cupboard packed with unsold High Pitch (A=452.5) 1867-Patent flutes. “There were loads of them on the shelves,” Angus recalled. “Some had been there for years and years, covered with dust. I had to take them out and use bits off them and try to make a Boehm flute. I’d have to use what I could, the keycups and all, but there was a lot of keywork to make, and you had to lengthen the strap to fit a modern-pitch (A=440) body.”

This turned out to be an excellent way to learn the practical business of keymaking without the pressure of producing a flute to order. That was the next stage, and Angus went on to make flutes in Monel, an alloy that Rudall Carte had popularised before the war, and then finally he was entrusted with crafting silver mechanisms.

‘You had to be flexible there,’ Angus recalled. ‘Sometimes there was a lull in silver flutes to be made, so you made a German Silver (nickel) one if required. If there was nothing new to be made, you did some repairs.’

When an order came in, a bell would ring on the foreman’s desk in the workshop. Len Hinde was the foreman at that time, and he would go through to the showroom and return with the specification of the required flute on a piece of paper, where silver or wooden body, open or closed G#, open or closed holes, etc. He would decide which flutemaker was best suited to the job and give him that piece of paper. The maker would then have a certain amount of time to complete the flute, up to four weeks for a Boehm-system, a bit longer for an 1867.

Each craftsman was on piecework, paid for the job on completion. He had to buy his own tools. Swiss files were particular prized. The atmosphere in the workshop was friendly and enthusiastic, and the experienced makers always looked to help and advise their juniors. Work began each day at 8 o’clock, but the staff would gather in a nearby cafe half an hour earlier to enjoy a sociable cup of tea. Amongst the younger makers was Harry Seeley, who had joined in 1956, and had learned about Boehm flutemaking from Angus. Only Fred Handke, the greatest and most experienced maker, responsible for gold flutes and those ordered by the top players, kept apart, working in one corner with his own lathe that no-one else touched, and always referred to as ‘Mr Handke’.

Just before Angus Harris joined Rudall Carte, the company had been bought by Boosey & Hawkes, a company that was more concerned with mass producing barely adequate instruments than supporting the tradition of fine handmade craftsmanship. B & H made no investment into the Berners Street workshop. One of the craftsmen I spoke to couldn’t bring himself even to say its name. The greatest flutemakers of their generation were having to make do with worn-out treadle lathes and gas burners for soldering. The heavier machines on the floor below, including the wood lathes on which the bodies and headjoints were turned, ran from a belt just under the ceiling that set their floor shaking. When a flutemaker needed to do some fine work he would take a pole, drop it down through a secret hole that had been bored through the floor, and displace the belt, giving himself some peace until the belt was set right again.

In 1958 Boosey & Hawkes had a particularly bad year. They had bought up Wheatstone’s, the famous old concertina maker, and decided to close Berners Street and move the flutemakers there. A year later, in December 1959, cutting costs again, Boosey & Hawkes moved flutemaking to their Denman Street workshop, which was noisy and uncongenial. The older craftsmen retired. Angus left and went to work for Selmer’s in Charing Cross Road, where he enjoyed his time repairing the various wind instruments that came through the door, just as he had in his apprenticeship. He also got married to Maureen, a friend of his sister.

His old colleagues, meanwhile, were equally disillusioned with Boosey & Hawkes. In 1961 a group of them set up a new company, Flutemakers Guild (FMG). This was to be a return to fine flutemaking. Harry Seeley invited Angus to join them. Their new foreman was Ewen McDougall, who had begun his apprenticeship at Rudall Carte in March 1950. As before, each craftsman was responsible for a flute in its entirity. But the FMG workshop was equipped with modern tools, and the flutemakers wasted no time in improving working techniques as casting and soldering.

Demand for FMG silver flutes was strong from the start. In 1963 the company received an order for an 1867-Patent flute. The work naturally fell to Angus. But there were no castings – they had been lost when the Berners Street workshop had closed. So he had to make each piece of keywork individually. The result was the last of its kind, and remarkably it is still owned and played by the man who commissioned it.

Gradually, with the return to popularity of wooden flutes, Angus and his colleagues went back to the heritage in which they had been apprenticed. There were also commissions for piccolos, alto and bass flutes, and G-trebles. The company was so successful that it took on apprentices. Each maker had some little identifying design quirk. “I used to do something on the thumb Bb key,” Angus explained. “Going down from the head it will be round till you got to the barrel. Then it would go into a V till under the lever. Half and half. So if it’s half V and half rounded then it’s one of mine. I did that. Little things like that made them individual.”

Wages at FMG, however, hardly matched what a skilled craftsman might expect. And Angus’ commute to North London from his home in Wallington, Surrey, was hardly an easy one. Eventually he left to take a job at a Ford manufacturing plant just a ten minute walk from his back door. Maureen was astonished when she saw how much fatter his first wage packet was. Despite some trepidation at going to work in a large factory, he found the place congenial. “It was mainly small pressings for the door winding mechanisms,” Angus remembered; “and for the windows, brackets for springs, and all the smaller body panels.”

Angus worked for fifteen years at Ford, retiring in 1996. But his flute career was not over; in fact it was about to enter an Indian summer. On meeting up with Harry Seeley he learned that FMG was down to only two craftsmen, the younger flutemakers having left. The company had an overflowing order book for wooden flutes. Thus it was that Angus returned to the FMG workshop in Shacklewell Road, working three days per week and carrying parts home to continue work there. His standards were as high as ever, so if he noticed even the slightest imperfection in a flute he would take it all apart and start again. He also produced the cases, while Maureen made the pads, stamping felt with a circular cutter.

This final series of flutes by Angus Harris and Harry Seeley is widely regarded as the peak of British wooden flutemaking. Each body is thinned, so the wood is hand carved to leave the toneholes proud. This took a lot of very skillful work, but it gives these flutes extra resonance and decreases their weight. The late David Shorey regarded these as the finest wooden flutes ever made, and the list of customers reads as a who’s-who of international flautists.

Angus’ first flute in this series of seven was a commission from Sebastian Bell, after whose death it went to the USA where it later sold in New York for $14,000. Angus’ second made its way to Jonathan Myall, who says that one of his regrets is not keeping it for himself. Instead a prominent player, whiling away an afternoon in his shop, began blowing it and was surprised to be told shortly afterwards that he had been playing non-stop for several hours and the shop was about to close. The prominent player took out his cheque book and remains its proud owner.

The end of FMG came shortly after Harry Seeley was forced by ill health to retire. Angus completed his final flute in April 1999. “There were still orders for wooden flutes,” Angus recalled. “There was no shortage of work. It seemed to be that everyone wanted one. Many were orders from the continent, particularly Germany. It took off, but when you are down to two people you can’t produce them. It wasn’t a short job making a one. You’ve got to make the wooden body, and make the keywork and put it on - it’s a long job.”

Angus retired but continued to craft beautiful objects at home, including animal figures and a Welsh dresser for his wife. Maureen remembers him as ‘Meticulous, quietly-spoken, unassuming, with a keen sense of humour – a perfectionist.’ Roger Harris died on March 12th 2019. In Harry Seeley’s estimation, “Angus” was one of the finest of flutemakers, on the same exalted level as the great Fred Handke. His flutes, still so sought after, attest to that.

British Flutemakers: William Simmons

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 20:47:03 GMT

William Simmons: A Flutemaker in the Great Tradition

In fact the name of this flutemaker isn't unfamiliar in flute circles. But William Simmons is associated mostly with headjoints and enjoys a reputation as a master repairer, the kind other repairers resort to when stumped. His passion however for many years has been designing and making silver flutes, thirty-seven so far owned and played by discerning flautists in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia.

For Albert Cooper and others of his generation, the way to become a flutemaker was still through an apprenticeship, in his case at Rudall Carte. But the story of how someone arrived at flutemaking once that traditional path had closed is both fascinating in its own right and instructive for the future.

William (Willy) Simmons is a Lancastrian, born and brought up at Kearsley and Little Hulton near Bolton. The sounds of engineering and music filled his home, his father and grandmother playing the piano and his father keeping a lathe for making and restoring clocks. Willy's flutemaking, he says, started the day he took his grandmother's clock apart and tried to put it back together. Inspired by his father, whom he remembers as a wonderful engineer, he then set about making a perpetual motion machine in Meccano. He played the recorder and sang in the church choir. Music tuition came from his grandmother and the choirmaster, who also ran a dance band featuring two saxophones. Willy duly took up the tenor sax and later the flute. He went on to serve his playing apprenticeship playing blues in clubs such as The Jungfrau in Manchester and The Cavern in Liverpool. When his Conn saxophone came back from the repairer in poor order, he did the job himself and discovered a skill and sense of satisfaction that has never left him.

After studying, playing and teaching music in London, Arthur Haswell moved to Northumberland where he repairs and restores flutes.

His reputation as a player reached Chris Blackwell, who offered him a retainer and any amount of work with artists on Island Records. So in 1966, at the start of the greatest modern musical boom, Willy moved to London, playing sessions by day and gigs in the evening, followed by private parties where musicians gathered to jam into the early hours. With no time to take his instruments to a repairer, he learned to do the job himself. He ran through a variety of flutes, trying and assessing everything from a Boosey & Hawkes Regent, to a French flute, a Bonneville, and on to a series of German flutes, including an aluminium Uebel which was very stout mechanically- an important factor when playing an average of nine bookings every week.

His repairing skills led other players to entrust their flutes to him. Some asked for modifications and so he began customising keywork. In session work he found the alto flute particularly popular and saw the opportunities for a bass flute, in those days a rare instrument. Without having one to copy, he devised a scale by calculation, made the parts and several prototype bodies to establish the tuning, and had almost finished the flute when it was stolen.

During those years Willy played on many records, toured with visiting American stars, and shared the famous stages of The Marquee and the ioo Club with musicians such as Graham Bond, Spencer Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Albert Lee, Zoot Money, and Jimmy Page. At last, tired of the unrelenting schedule, he quit and returned to Kearsley. Having come to prefer the flute to the sax, its pure conception and construction appealing to his perfectionism, he decided to study it properly and took lessons with Joan Simpkin and Geoffrey Gilbert, while playing in a folk duet and later in opera and pit bands.

His reputation as a technician had followed him home and over the next decade he established himself as a repairer nationwide. Seeing a great variety of flutes, he came to appreciate the well-designed and skilfully-made. In particular he was lucky enough to work regularly on Cooper and Almeida flutes, an experience that opened his eyes to how beautiful and finely constructed a flute could be.

In the 1980s he went to America, where he met Edward Almeida and visited the Brannen and Powell factories. A trip to Belfast on his return brought him into contact with a flute band that needed a new G treble - a harmony flute half way to becoming a piccolo. Willy set about making them one. In order to establish a scale he measured a dozen G trebles, noting what he thought was wrong with each of them and mathematically correcting the faults. After making a couple of prototypes he finished his first Simmons flute.

He made two more G trebles for bands in Ireland and Scotland before turning his attention to the huge task of designing a standard concert flute. He consulted a number of makers of whom Harry Seeley, who'd worked at Rudall Carte and was then at Flutemakers Guild, was particularly helpful. As before, to devise a scale Willy measured as many professional flutes as he could find. The scales used by Japanese makers he found too disparate to be considered. He studied a number of Cooper flutes and discovered a pattern that showed how Albert Cooper had sought to bring his instruments up to modern pitch. Across a selection of Boston-made flutes, all supposedly built to a fixed scale, he noted an inconsistency in manufacture that left them all different. But by employing his previous method of deciding what was wrong and making calculations to put that right he established, through a series of three prototypes, a satisfactory scale and design, and went on to make a flute in silver with closed holes.

While his original scale was largely a success, in subsequent flutes he continued to make minor alterations to the position and size of tone-holes. In devising a scale, he says, there are always compromises, and the art lies in knowing which compromises to allow. Players, he points out, often do not appreciate this need for informed compromise. He himself has striven to find the balance.

So far Willy Simmons has made a total of twenty-five standard concert flutes and twelve G-trebles. When preparing to make a flute, Willy asks, 'How can I improve on the last one? How can I make this next one the best?' The result is that each flute is different, a unique whole, the fact their maker is never satisfied in no way invalidating any of them. As he is keen to point out, he doesn't regard any as inferior. Some of his flutes have open holes, some closed. A few are open G sharp. Two feature automatic F sharp mechanisms which close the A key. Apart from two built to special order he has fitted an E-mechanism to all (except, of course, the ones with an open G sharp).

Just as he could have produced many more flutes had he established a pattern and kept to it, turning out over and over again the same model, so his work would be easier if he bought in parts, as some flutemakers prefer, for instance fitting Brannen keywork to a hand-made body. For Willy that would preclude continuous development and rule out the fine tolerances that elevate his flutes. This is nowhere better illustrated than in his approach to the problem of allowing for the different tuning characteristics of an open-hole compared to a closed-hole flute. To compensate for the slightly higher pitch given by open hole keys, makers generally move each tone-hole and key cup one millimetre down the body. But, as Willy points out, the actual amount needed increases with the distance from the head joint, like the spacing of frets on a guitar. Making everything himself, he is able to design this precise proportional increase into his open-hole flutes, giving them a truer scale.

This article first appeared in Pan magazine in December 2009. We are grateful to Robert Bigio for his encouragement, and for providing originals of this article from his archive.

British Flutemakers: Harry Seeley

Fri, 07 Jan 2022 21:34:45 GMT

Harry Seeley: Sixty Years a Flutemaker

Of post-war British flutemakers, few have enjoyed such a high reputation or been responsible for such a large quantity of flutes as Harry Seeley. Slightly younger than Albert Cooper and a contemporary of Ewen McDougall, Harry Seeley worked for thirty-seven years at Flutemakers Guild, the only employee to have neem there both at its foundation and its demise. In that time he established himself as one of the finest makers in silver, gold, and wood He was also responsible for countless repairs, alterations, and refurbishments to the extent that there can hardly have been a player around while he was active who didn’t benefit from his workmanship. Top flautists ordered new flutes from him, students sought him out for repairs, and younger makers learnt their trade at his side.

Harry Seeley traces his flutemaking back to a Scottish scoutmaster who organised a pipe band near his home in Tottenham, North London. Harry took up the pipes and made contact with the company that had made them, Henry Starke, which offered him an apprenticeship. A grammar-school boy, Harry might have stayed on but chose to leave at sixteen in 1948, encouraged by his parents who were glad to see that he’d found a job. Starke, a family-owned company founded in 1876, operated from a small workshop in Camden Town where its half-dozen or so employees made pipes and military fifes. Harry became an assembler, making and fitting keys to wooden bodies made downstairs in the turning shop. National Service took him away and when he returned, a friend working at Rudall Carte introduced him to that famous old company. Harry realised there was no progress to be made at Starke’s and joined Rudall Carte in 1956.

Unlike other flute manufacturers, such as those in Boston which are organised with a certain division of labour, Rudall Carte continued the British tradition of employing individual makers of piece-work, each responsible more or less for an entire flute. ‘You were told what the company wanted, like a wood flute or silver flute, and given the basic parts, and you made it,’ Harry explains. ‘And when you’d made it you were paid. The harder you worked the more money you earned. Certain parts would have been made by someone else. If it was a wood flute you’d be given the body and the materials for the strap and pillars. Pillars were made on a capstan lathe usually by apprentices. It was up to you to drill and mount the pillars and make the keywork.’ After that the maker had to take the flue right through to completion.

The keywork of one of Harry Seeley's last flutes, made for Patricia Morris. (Photograph by Robert Bigio.)

Because all the makers were on piece-work, non was available to teach Harry. Luckily he sat alongside Angus Harris, an experienced craftsman who showed him what to do. From having never seen a Boehm flute, Harry progressed quickly and after about a year made his first flute. ‘They gave me a box of old bits and said “Here you are, make yourself something out of that”,’ Harry recalls with amusement. ‘And I actually ended up making a flute.’ For all Harry’s self-deprecation it must have passed the foreman’s inspection for it was sold to someone in New Zealand, where perhaps it is still being played.

Each maker would have his own way of working and his own style within the general Rudall Carte pattern. The best makers were responsible for the most important flutes. ‘When I went to Rudall Carte there were two top men: Fred Handke and Frank Charlton, who were then quite elderly. If there was a need for the gold flute a thinned wood flute it would normally be made by Handke. Younger men such as Albert Cooper and Henry Green were also amongst the good makers.’

Harry’s work book records the various jobs he did, from repairing or altering keywork to making complete flutes. An order for flutes in Bb, and F from an Irish band provided a particularly unusual education. The band still used the Guards model, with keywork that was a cross between the Boehm and 1867 systems. ‘I sat next to Frank Charlton,’ Harry explains, ‘and he made all the Bb flutes and I made the ones in F, and he showed me how to do it. Not many of those were made. I doubt if they were ever made again.’ Of all the various jobs, Harry particularly enjoyed bringing an old instrument back to life, for instance by transferring the keywork of a high pitch flute to a new modern pitch body, a job that would take about a week and a half. His work book shows that on 5 January 1958 he finished converting a Radcliff flute to a Boehm system after a hundred hours’ work. Making a flute from scratch generally took slightly longer: three weeks or more.

Harry’s talent was such that within five years he was himself making thinned wood flutes. But Rudall Carte was not the company it had once been. Having been bought by Boosey & Hawkes, it was being starved of investment and had to keep asking its parent company for equipment and material. ‘They never upgraded any machines, ever,’ Harry recalls. ‘We were still using treadle lathes.’ When Boosey & hawkes hit tough times financially in 1960 its management decided to bring all the manufacturing of its various subsidiaries under the roof of its own factory at Edgware, in north London. This hardly suited, Harry who was by then living south of the river, and went down no better with many of his colleagues.

In 1961 seven makers left Rudall Carte, including Harry Seeley, Angus Harris, and the foreman Ewen McDougall, to set up a new company which they called Flutemakers Guild. Through auspices of the Lord Mayor of London, who had been a flautist in his youth, the makers approached Charles Stanley Padgett, Prime Warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company and owner of a gold and silversmithing company. Padgett supplied finance and a workshop in his premises at Broadwick Street, Soho ,and after 1974 in Shacklewell Road, where the flutemakers had the use of lathes and equipment already owned by the company. All aspects of flute manufacturing, from the acquisition of silver tubing to engraving of the highest calibre, could be done on the premises. Now the makers enjoyed the freedom of producing flutes as they liked under the foremanship of Ewen McDougall, who was responsible for the first of their flutes but then concentrated on headjoints.

The flute market in the 1960s was very different to the one we know today. There were no flute shops and only a handful of manufacturers to choose between. A player looking for a professional instrument might place an order with Haynes or Powell, who had long waiting lists, or take a trip to the Flutemakers Guild premises, inside the door of which lay a tiny enclosure furnished with a desk where customers could discuss their requirements and place their order. Players might ask for different keywork, extra touch -pieces, elaborate decoration, or even an old system. Harry particularly remembers having to rebuild a gold 1867 system flute, a task that was unusually challenging. The 1867 system had long since lost its popularity, so there were no patterns or castings to work with. The job was not made easier by the fact that the keywork is complex and has to be spot on for the flute to work properly – one of the reasons perhaps that it lost out to the Boehm-system. A gold Boehm-system flute that Harry made in 1979 featured a similarly elaborate acanthus design on its keywork and a garnet mounted in its button. All the components, such as saddles key arms and cups had to be made by hand out of gold strip. Working on such a project, Harry says, was a worry and responsibility until finished. The result is a tour-de-force of flutemaking, a delight to the eye and the ear.

At first the style of Flutemakers Guild flutes was in the Rudall Carte tradition, but with the majority in silver as wood went out of fashion. It was only in 1966, after the company had completed more than a hudred flutes, that the first order came in for one in wood. Silver flutes had soldered tone-holes and keywork made entirely by hand. A significant improvement came in 1983 with the introduction of the Cooper scale, and in the later 1990s as wood flutes returned to fashion Harry’s experience at Rudall Carte came into its own.

As well as the original founders, Flutemakers Guild in the 1960s and 1970s took on a number of trainees, including Howel Roberts and Martin Gordon, both now independent makers, and Chris Bouckley who remained with the company almost to the end, which came into view in the 1990s. Despite the high quality of the product, the number of makers at Flutemakers Guild dwindled. Ewen McDougall retired in 1983; Angus Harris offered more money, took a job with Ford. Now the remaining makers were reluctant to bring in a novice. Apart from the difficulty of training someone up to the required standard, Harry says, ‘I didn’t think it was fair to bring a youngster into a trade that would eventually die.’ The market was changing, with Japanese companies sending good flutes as stock for new specialist shops where flautists could pick their new flute off a shelf. For a while Seeley and Bouckley were the only makers at the workshop, then Harry was left on his own. Since Ewen’s departure Harry had been making head joints to go with his flutes, so he was happy to continue doing everything. His fame and skill ensured he was kept busy. He was now particularly in demand for his thinned wood flutes.

Thinning a wooden body is a delicate and time-consuming job, milling away the wood while leaving the tone-holes proud, but it produces a thin-wall, about half the normal thickness, that resonates as though by magic in a player’s hands. Harry regards these last flutes as the finest of his career, built with all his experience and utilising the Cooper scale. He planned to go on working until he hit seventy, and then perhaps have a lathe in a shed at home, but in 1998, as Harry recalls, ‘There was I sitting at my bench one day, minding my own business, when the Good Lord pointed his finger.’ He suffered a stroke that finished his career and brought an end to Flutemakers Guild. He still had on his books ten orders for thinned wood flutes.

During his time at Flutemakers Guild, Harry Seeley made about 120 flutes to add to his fifty-six for Rudall Carte. He was responsible over the course of a fifty-year career for countless transplants, refurbishments, and repairs. All those who have seen his work will know that he ranks amongst the finest, his style neat and right, his workmanship exemplary. There is no arrogance or dogmatism in his character and this is reflected in his flutes, which demonstrate that the ideal personal qualities for a flutemaker are honest, pragmatism, and a natural desire to do the very best you can for the job’s sake. The list of customers for whom he made flutes reads as a Who’s Who of British flautists. Many of the thinned wood flutes from near the end of his career went to players in continental Europe, particularly Germany. And his reputation is secure further afield. In 2006 David Shorey of Antique Flutes in California listed one of Harry’s flutes, wood one-piece body down to B tuned to the Cooper scale, with Brossa F sharp and G trill, ‘We felt,’ Shorey says, ‘that this instrument was fully the equal of the best of the Rudall Carte wooden flutes, which we believe to have been the best wooden Boehm flutes ever made, unless one specifically wanted a French flute. This undeniable treasure is all the more exciting as the work of a modern flutemaker.’ Harry’s renown is not restricted to past of the present generation: for instance, when the young Canadian flautist Aysha Wills tried that same flute ages eleven she fell instantly in love. ‘A sound came out,’ she says, ‘that I never knew I could make on a flute. Big and warm, easy to play yet with amazing depth and colour.’ She has subsequently used the flute in numerous recording sessions and concerts. ‘Harry may be retired, but his flutes are still working and sounding brilliant!’ she says, adding, ‘I think Harry’s legacy has been criminally neglected.’

If Harry Seeley is not as well known as, for instance, his Rudall Carte associate Albert Cooper, that may be because he never had the desire to set up on his own. He says he hadn’t the money to establish a workshop or the contacts to give himself an entrée into the musicians’ world. This may be partly an example of his humility, but the consequence is that Harry’s flutes do not bear his name. Nevertheless they are treasured by their owners and sought by those in the know. There can be little doubt that, like his former colleagues Fred Handke and Albert Cooper, Harry Seeley’s name will forever be associated with hand-made flutes of the highest quality.

This article first appeared in Pan, March 2010. I am indebted to the then-editor Robert Bigio for providing originals from his archive, and for encouraging me at the time to write a piece in celebration of Harry Seeley. I visited Harry and his wife Barbara on a snowy January day and was made to feel welcome with smiles and a light lunch. The article wrongly states that Ewen McDougall retired in 1983, whereas in fact he and his wife moved to North Yorkshire where he set up a workshop and made a series of superb flutes engraved with his own name until his untimely death in 1999.