An Imposition against the Public?
Look inside the lid of the stylish vaulted cases provided with their
flutes by Rudall & Rose and you'll find an interesting
certificate. It reads:
"Rudall & Rose, having discovered that Flutes are
offered for Sale bearing their names & addrefs, which have not
been made by them, are determined to guard the Public against such
imposition, by not sending out in future any Flute from their
Manufactory without this Notice affixed to the top of the Case."
The certificate is signed:
George Rudall, John, M, Rose
and in later days carries the date. Here's an
example of such a certificate, from a Bb flute in the Royal Northern
College of Music in Manchester.
Well, is it for real? Were there really other makers
passing off their flutes as having been made by the illustrious firm of
Rudall and Rose? Or was it just clever merchandising - pretend your
product is so good that others are imitating it? We think we now
have some real live evidence to put before you ....
Contemporary evidence
But before we look at our smoking gun, let's look for
corroborating evidence from writers of around that time. From
Lindsay's "A Few Practical Hints"
(London, 1829), we find that the practice of faking flutes by well-known
makers was well documented:
"But incapacity is not the whole "head and front of their offending," for these sort of gentry often go a step
further, and having no reputation of their own, they make free to borrow
that of various respectable and established maker's, by stamping their names upon
the trash vamped up in the manner we have described, and so doubly impose upon the
unwary.
In this way, the names of Messrs. CLEMENTI
and Co., Messrs. MONZANI
and Co., Mr. NICHOLSON, and Mr.
POTTER have been successively used by the unprincipled and designing, sometimes either omitting, adding, or altering a single letter in the
orthography of the name, so as to evade the operation of the Law, in the event of
the fraud being detected. Indeed to such an extent have these nefarious practices been carried on, with reference to the last mentioned individual, in particular, that they must of necessity have subjected him to much mortification and loss: there is scarcely
in town a shop window of the description alluded to, which has not an abundance
of " Potter's Flutes" exposed for sale, not one in six of which are legitimate, but known amongst the
flute-making trade by the unequivocal denomination of "bastard Potters."
The same system has been followed in regard to Mr.
DROUET'S manufacture, and the comparatively inconsiderable number of Flutes, which his short sojourn in this country enabled him to finish, has, even on a moderate computation, been thus surreptitiously increased five-fold, for notwithstanding all
the "fine toned Flutes by Drouet," which are ticketed up in every street, scarcely a
genuine DROUET Flute is now to be met with."
But more than that, Lindsay reveals the practice of foisting badly-made
flutes off as the work of others. He precedes the above with:
"It is a fact that no
wooden, musical instrument can be expected to prove perfect, unless
manufactured from well-seasoned materials; but, in despite of this
truth, it is notorious that nine-tenths of those instruments which are
daily exhibited in the Sale-shop window are made by needy workmen,
without credit, who have neither capital to carry into the market to
purchase a stock of material, a good model to work from, nor yet
character as tradesmen at stake. The consequence is that a single
log of wood is often purchased on one day, is sawn into lengths the
next, and subsequently turned, bored, mounted with what is called
silver, and otherwise metamorphosed, in the course of the same week,
into an apparently elegant Flute, - but without tone, without
intonation, "sans everything," in short, but external
appearance to recommend it. This Flute, with all its faults and
imperfections on its head is then sold to the Pawnbroker, or Salesman,
for whatever price it will fetch, and immediately offered to the public
as an instrument of the very first order, an article of undoubted vertú!"
Other writers around that time have made the same and similar
claims But claims are one thing - it would be nice to see a real
live example (pauses for drum roll) ....
The Peoples Exhibit No 1
The flute below was turned up in late 2002 in a second-hand store in
Vancouver, Canada, by my good friend and research colleague Adrian
Duncan. Several weeks later it landed on my doorstep. It's
currently "assisting authorities with their
enquiries".
Compared to what, m'Lord?
It has to be said that Rudall & Rose have not made it easy for us
to spot a fraud. Their output, some 5800 flutes before they became
Rudall Rose & Co, is enormously varied in every conceivable
feature. We'll be relying on evidence thrown up in our Rudall, Rose
or Carte Models Study, but we have to concede that virtually every flute
so far investigated is different in at least some way from every other.
Old Fake or Crummy Repair?
The flute in question is in bad shape. Only one key remains on
the body section and most blocks are not integral with the body.
What is original work and what is more recent? We need to tread
cautiously...
How to proceed?
Our approach will be to look at every detail of the flute, comparing it
to what we might expect of an authentic Rudall. We'll certainly
point to the things that we find anomalous, before trying to
determine if the flute is authentic. If you know better about a
point we raise, we want to hear from you. We'll work our way down
the flute, bringing every matter of interest to your attention.
THE HEAD
The cap
Starting at the top we meet the cap. Now the cap plays no part in
the acoustics of the instrument (apart from being our way to move the
stopper). It's essentially a functional item with some decorative
properties. It seems to me that, at 11.2mm, this cap is thicker than the
usual Rudall cap and employs different decoration (see below).
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