Rönnberg continued

 As I referenced in the last post, William Rönnberg is a very well documented maker largely due to an interview which he gave to Baldwin's Musical Review in 1879. I don't believe any other maker has spoken in such detail about their work, and from as many different aspects.

In looking around at what Rönnberg flutes were in collections, it became clear that not only did he make a wide variety of woodwinds, but certainly in the case of his flutes, and particularly before he began to concentrate on Böhm flutes, no two of his flutes appear to be similar. 

Here's a list of links to what appears to be in public collections, and also a couple that were, or are, for sale.

1/ What appears to be a rather fancy flute with a B foot. They claim that it's "clad in tortoiseshell", but I wonder is it just stained to resemble tortoiseshell. He was known to stain box wood, to make it resemble other timbers. Have a look here

2/ This one, about as different as you can get from the first, sold recently on eBay. Have a look quickly as these listings don't remain available as long as they used to...See it here

3/ Expand the photo on this one, and it actually looks a bit like tortoiseshell too. I think in this case, that this flute is made from Platymiscium, which can at times have that sort of pattern. Again, distinctly different. Look here

4/ Don't pay too much attention to the blurb with this sale...

5/ 6/ 7/

Finally three from the DCM in Washington DC. The first, DCM 0490 resembles to a large degree 1/ down to the unusual triple trill key.  The final two DCM 0837, and DCM 0051 are examples of his Böhm flutes. He is generally considered more of a maker of Böhm flutes than simple system.

The flute that I wrote about in the last post is in fact the only "standard" 8 key flute by Rönnberg to which I can find any reference.

Following is the full text of the Baldwin's Musical Review article. I apologise for the mixed up line spacing etc. This is due to the fact that you can't export dictated text from Word except as an image. Weird huh?