Adding Silver to GHP's

[psychodonald]

Was wondering if anyone has had the experience of adding silver to their GHP's? I would appreciate hearing of your experience, if you have; or for that matter just your opinion on the subject even if you haven't. Also, suggestions as to who you would recommend to do the job within the USA. Don't want to send my pipes out of the states for a variety of reasons. Thanks, Don Morgan.

[pancelticpiper]

Yes it's a bit scary sending ivory-mounted pipes across borders, but I have done. (I'm in the USA.)

I had a set of full-ivory c1920 Lawries, a wonderful set, and I sent parts of them to David Naill in England to have silver slides added. (The design an original one I drew up, a modification of an old Henderson pattern.) It looked fantastic and no problems with shipping the ivory-mounted parts across borders twice. Naill does nice silverwork and I can highly recommend them.

I also had some silver added to another set by Rick Pettigrew at Dunbar Bagpipes in St Catherines Ontario Canada. The silver was purchased through the firm of David Marshall, the actual engraving done by David Davidse. Once again there was no problem with ivory mounted parts crossing borders. If you're unaware, David Davidse is a fabulous engraver and is the actual engraver behind "David Marshall Silverworks".

To purchase the silverwork itself from Naill or Davidse but have the silver locally mounted here in the USA I can highly recommend Michael Hubbert for the job. His craftsmanship and eye for detail and love of vintage instruments cannot be overstated.

Here's a great story about retrofitting silver on vintage pipes: So often when this is done the silver looks like an obvious aftermarket retrofit, the silver being of a pattern that wasn't used at the time the pipes were made, and besides that the silver jumping out as looking freshly engraved, not silver that has "lived" on the pipes since the pipes were new.

A friend of mine bought, very cheaply, an extremely nice set of full-ivory Hendersons on Ebay, one of the finest-sounding Hendersons you'll ever hear, an early set c1900-1930. The pipes had one big cosmetic issue that had perhaps put off other buyers: the set had originally been made with slides, and these had been removed leaving the tuning pins looking rough and ugly.

It so happened that I have another friend with a silver & ivory Henderson of just that vintage which has silver in a fantastic distinctive Henderson "Celtic knot & dragon" pattern. (I've only seen, over the years, four sets with that pattern, all vintage Hendersons.) And it so happened that I had done extremely detailed drawings of that pattern.

So we ordered a set of four silver slides from Naill, custom engraved in that vintage distinctive Henderson pattern, and when they arrived we sent the slides and pipes up to Michael Hubbert.

When the pipes came back we were astounded at how good they looked! Michael had not only seamlessly mounted the slides, but also had given the silver the suggestion of a century's worth of wear, so that no one looking at the set would ever guess that the slides were not original to the set: having all appearance of the same age as the set, and of a silver pattern known to be used by Henderson at the time that set was made.

This, in my opinion, is how to do silver retrofitting.

David Davidse (Truehand Engraving)

http://www.bagpipemounts.com/gallery/page/gallery

Michael Hubbert. He's known nowadays as being one of the best uilleann pipemakers on the planet, but he has made a variety of instruments over the years (octave mandolins, hurdy gurdys, Baroque flutes, Baroque bassoons) and he has done restoration work on a number of Highland pipes

http://michaelhubbertuilleannpipes.com/

This is the vintage Henderson pattern I was referring to. Interestingly the four old Henderson sets I've seen with this pattern have three different border treatments:
1) having the pattern confined within panels having rectangular borders, as is usually seen on GHB silverwork
2) having the pattern confined within panels which have rounded (semicircular) ends (this version appears on the early silver & ivory Hendersons I made sketches of)
3) having no separated panels on the ferrules, the dragons in contact with each other (this version appears on the full silver set below)



Here is our fellow member Jeff's fantastic full silver 1952 Hendersons with this pattern

[psychodonald]

Thank you for your response. I'm aware of the work of Davidse and it is very beautiful (perhaps an understatement), and as one would expect, it comes at a fairly high cost. I suppose it could be safely stated that one gets what one pays for. I've even given some consideration to machine engraved work; spoke with one merchant, who sells Davidse engraved products and he references the machine engraved silver, as opposed to Davidse's work, as "crap." It would appear that there are few persons with the skill and abilities to hand engrave at his level in our modern world--getting to be a lost art. Well, I'm keeping my options open a this stage; however, I do appreciate your response and the photos. Thanks again, Don Morgan.

[pancelticpiper]

I'm of two minds to machine engraving. I actually like this style, and used to have a set of ABW Dunbars mounted this way

http://www.dunbarbagpipes.com/P2_Imitat ... pipes.html

or a direct link to one of the images



What I find hideous are the machine engraved sterling silver mounts offered by Kintail, a waste of good silver in my opinion

http://www.kintail.co.uk/

or a direct link to the image on their home page