Harry Seeley: Sixty Years a Flutemaker

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.