ART NOUVEAU "VANGUARD" FLUTE SHOWCASE

In 35 years of flutemaking I'd say I've made in excess of two thousand flutes. Most of them for other companies that I contracted with. Of those, one hundred and forty are John Lunn flutes. Eighty are a 'traditional' model that I no longer make, and fifty are my Art Nouveau flutes. The images on this page show the evolution of that design over the past twenty years. This 1981 drawing is my first attempt to capture the concept on paper. Compare the original sketch with the 1993 gold/silver flute.

My headjoints always stayed simple, partly because there is so much open tubing and only the crown and lip plate to embellish. On this flute I went to town with the blossom and spider on the lip plate as well as the turtle crown. In the past I have chased other lip plates with butterflies. This snail crown picture was part of an entire snail flute motif. The Dragon crown is an idependent design that I hope to incorporate into a mythology Dryad motif. The mask is one of the new glories to add some art to your flute crown.

I started out with a simple ring on the barrels. As the design progressed I realized I didn't need to use a straight line because the barrel overlapped on the tubing so I wrapped the wire more like a crooked branch and added leaves. On the green gold flute, I made it more like bark because the logo and the chased lettering is on a separate piece of 'parchment' to look like a page.

The ribs were plain for the first 100 flutes, mainly because they went with my traditional model flute and had such traditional posts in them. I started using a hammer that put the bark detail in. You can also see the post on the gold flute is a twig rather than a turned part. The grooves in this hammer leave a mirror image in the metal. There is a video demonstration on the process page.

The trills, like all the other arms began simply and straight. It was difficult to make them too delicate and still have strength. The angled silver ones are strong enough. On the gold, I made a straight rod for support underneath and then wound the twigs any way I wanted.

As with the trills, strength had to come first so the arms on the early models aren't elaborate. I got carried away on the gold flute with the twigs to create a wild sense. The lever touches in silver started as flat pieces with a surface chasing. The gold one is raised from a thin sheet and shaped both on the bottom and top. The chasing video on the Process page demonstrates the technique.

Getting the bottom end of the thumb keys to integrate into the sculpture was always a challenge. I liked making one key look like it branched off from the other and have used that for quite some time. The thumb posts are also twigs and I didn't sink the screw heads in all the way so it would look like wood screws in a tree.

The Footjoint Cluster is a complex piece of machinery as well as aesthetic design. I bent the C# lever over many times to give it as much of a curve to fit the D# next to so I could avoid either cutting into it or soldering a piece on. It almost looks like the raised texture of the levers would impede the finger from running from one to the other. It' actually quite comfy.