I recently returned from a trip to Europe where I picked up an old flute. I’ve been playing for about 2 years now on a Sweetheart Resonance and snapped this one up for a relative bargain. I bought it in London; the shop had it marked as “unknown brand” but I can faintly make out “LaFleur” on the headjoint and the barrel. It has 9 keys; all the keys you’d expect on an 8 key model plus an extra on top of the C key that appears to be a trill key perhaps. When fingering B it jumps up to D#.
(I brightened the pic up a bit in photoshop to see it better)
I did a little googling of the name and from what I could find out JR LaFleur were in business from 1863 to 1939 when they were bought by Conn. Anyone have any idea around when this flute was made? It has two small cracks, one on the barrel and one on the lower joint. Both have been sealed. It sounds ok to me, though I’m obviously not an expert player just yet. The intonation on the A and B is pretty sharp; I’ve put a little tape over part of the holes to make it play in tune a bit better.
Well, you’ve got the date bracket for LaFleur - barring any extra defining info like a serial number or an address with a narrower date-range, you won’t get any closer. FWIW & IMO a flute like this one is most likely to fall in the period 1880-1920, but that is just subjective.
The style of the German Silver/maillechort key-work is certainly French. I think JR LaFleur were a London firm or at least a French firm with a London branch? Boosey & Hawkes certainly used to import LaFleur branded instruments too. French (style) keywork on flutes sold by the likes of B&H in the later part of the C19th and the early C20th seems to be quite common - to the extent that I have surmised before that either they were importing the fittings from France to put on English built woodwork or they were importing finished French products and self-branding them or there were significant numbers of French/French trained craftsmen working in English woodwind workshops… or a combination of the above. The C foot and long F key are perhaps indicators that this flute was intended for the British or maybe German market, wherever it was manufactured, as the French tended to prefer 5-key flutes with no long F and no foot extension below D.
The “extra” key is an E trill for the 3rd 8ve D-E trill. The sharp A & B are common on late simple system flutes - German and British ones as well as French - partly at least to do with design compromises in building an instrument with a wide degree of tunability. To some extent the discrepancy can be reduced with the correct embouchure style and technique, but it is likely to remain noticeable and reducing tone-hole size judiciously with beeswax or shellac can be advantageous, as we have discussed previously on this forum.
I’ve no idea if it is even likely that there would be a serial number, sorry - that was just a speculation - and if there is one, I’ve equally no idea how you might set about dating it. If there was one, you’d likely have found it by now. Underside of the upper body just below the tenon is a site sometimes used for stamping info as well as the upper faces of head, barrel and upper body. I doubt you’ll find anything, though.
As for the sharp A and B, I don’t just mean “lipping down”. We have several times had discussions here re: mid C19th post-Nicholson English flutes and how the correct embouchure and blowing technique (constant, not note-specific, though of course that doesn’t exclude specific lipping-in) will bring the flat D and the sharp A typical of those flutes much better into line - something similar may work in this case, especially if it is a flute made for the British market. But I’m by no means trying to discourage you from a bit of judicious retuning by non-permanent means.
