On 25 Apr 2010, Philip Gruar wrote: > Joe's ivory and > silver pipes were made by Errington Thompson, a very good amateur maker, > sometime around 1880. He was a professional man - architect or doctor I > think.
Last time I spoke to Graham Wells he said he believed it was actually a James Reid set in its entirety. I had heard that Baty, Reid, and Errington Thomson co-operated on it. Joe always said it was made in 1873. Reid died in 1874, Thompson in 1892, Baty 1882. It went from Thompson to PJ Liddell, from him to GG Armstrong. Tommy Breckons had it for a while but didn't get on with it and sold it to Joe in the 1950s. I believe it to be still with the Hutton family, possibly in the Berwick area. It now has plates round some of the fingerholes as the ivory is worn through to either the bore, or at least sufficiently that the holes are no longer tuneable. I can attest to this latter effect - ivory is one lifetime only material for well played chanters. >This chanter was by John Baty of Wark-on-Tyne > who had worked with Errington-Thompson on making pipes, and the chanter was > identical to the one in Joe's set. ... The obvious thing was to copy Joe's > set as closely as > possible, which involved visiting Joe, photographing and measuring the > drones, and of course I still have the photo's and drawings. Fascinating. Filed for future information. I believe there is also the wooden prototype (lignum if memory serves) that Christopher Wancke has. The guy's name was Thomas Errington Thompson, (it's not a double barrelled surname - he seems to have used his 2nd name) and I've seen family history info connecting him back to a family in the Rochester area c. 1750. He lived at Sewingshields at the time the pipes were made. Can't remember any more for now - does that help? Julia To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
