| Baroque Lutes - Simple | |||
| 11 courses | £3195 | ||
| 13 courses | £3460 | ||
| Baroque Lutes - Decorated | |||
| 11 courses | £3495 |
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| 13 courses | £3755 | ||
| Indian rosewood body and veneers | |||
| Viheula - Simple | ||||
| 6 courses | £2500 |
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Lutes Sounds | |
| To hear two of my lutes being tried out in the
workshop, click on the buttons to the right. |
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General Information | ||
I have been making lutes since 1974 and I like to make them
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Planing lute ribs Photo by Tim Motion for an article in Country Living - 1990 |
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Lutes from my workshop can be made entirely to customers specification. One of the pleasures of having a musical instrument made this way is that many choices are left to the player - tone, woods used, string length, string tension, use of gut or nylon strings, width of the nut, rose design, decoration. The most useful instruments originate from a working partnership between the player and maker.
Soundboards (tops) are made from best quality 'Swiss Pine' (Picea abies). In my opinion, this is the only wood which works for lutes. The tree grows all over Europe, but only in certain localities can it be harvested for musical instrument making. Plantations in the Alps have been in existence for centuries and it is reported that these plantations are being well managed. For the remainder of the lute, I use plenty of native English timber; sycamore, maple, cherry, walnut, ash, apple, pear, plum etc. They are all beautiful woods, relativly inexpensive and locally available. I air dry these woods myself, exactly as the old lute makers would have done. I now use far less exotic timber (tropical hardwoods). I do not intend to buy any ebony until the source of the timber can be shown to be acceptable by the Forest Stewardship Council. I have enough ebony for three or four fingerboards and will reserve this for professionals. I have more rosewood, enough for quite a few fingerboards and one baroque lute. It seems that rosewood is more scarce than endangered and good Indian rosewood is still available from Indian government auctions. There is no ivory, whalebone or Brazilian rosewood in my instruments. My latest lute has a finger board of Irish bog oak. In short, my lutes are authentically and responsibly constructed, and very playable. If you are interested in purchasing one of my lutes, please email me at:
At the moment the waiting list is about eight months and I ask a non-refundable deposit of about 15% to confirm an order.
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