FS: Coyne B Set in Boxwood

[rorybbellows]

Even though these sets are different pitches you can see the similarities.the first set is the one for sale ,the second is the Csharp set that hangs on the wall in Jimmy's O'Brien's pub in Killarney and is a confirmed Coyne set.



RORY

[PJ]

Even though these sets are different pitches you can see the similarities.

I don't see any similarities. The reg caps, the mounts and ferrules, the reg keys and key blocks all look entirely different. The only thing vaguely similar is that the touch of the reg keys is a "figure eight" shape but even then, the bends on the keys are different.

[rorybbellows]

I don't see any similarities.

Ya should have gone to specsavers. If that doesn,t work try looking again and for abit longer this time.

RORY

[razzmaster]

They hang on a wall!?

[Sam L]

Just to pass some ideas on from the boss . . .

there were 3 Coynes, Maurice, John William (who bought the business from Kenna's widow) and also Maurice's son John, the noted piper. Though it is hard to be certain we think that the set for sale is JW Coyne, the set hung on the wall Maurice. Nollaig McCathy's B set would also be Maurice.

The man who would know best is Sean Donnelly, who tracked down ?Maurice? Coyne's grave to ?Glasnevin? cemetery - long time passed and P can't recall for certain.

It's possible that we have Maurice and JW the wrong way around (and probably we'll never know) but the two separate styles exist.

Just to re-iterate, we're on speculative ground here but thought it would interest.

Sam

[Brazenkane]

...ah..it's great to have people in the know on the list!

[tommykleen]

And which Coyne made Ennis' set?

tommykleen

[tompipes]

James Ennis Snr bought a bag of sticks in a pawn shop and had the set rebuilt by a Dublin maker. Brogan or Mulcrone, I forget which one at the moment.
The original set had an extra double bass regulator. That and other design features would suspect that the set was made by Maurice Coyne.

Tommy

[Sam L]

Would agree that Ennis set very most likely Maurice - some doubt on closer inspection about Nollaig's set.

[billh]

As Sam reminded us in an earlier reply, there is a lot of speculation going on here, and it's worth keeping this firmly in mind.

Seán Donnelly's article for the Seán Reid Society Journal "A Century of Pipemaking 1770-1870: new light on the Kennas and the Coynes" is the authoritative publication on the pipemaking families of the late 18th and 19th centuries. (Fortunately it is availble online now!)

John William Coyne certainly made flutes but it is not even certain that he made pipes. (There's a set in the National Museum of Ireland which is suspected to be a John William, and it does have a number of features that distinguish it from other Coyne sets.) Maurice Coyne made pipes, and advertised himself as a maker of "Union and Scotch Bagpipes". Later, a "John Coyne" advertised himself using the same wording - chronology seems to rule out this being the same as "John William" Coyne.

If JW did make pipes, it's thought (based on surviving flutes, I believe) that his stamp differed from Maurice's. The usual reckoning - which is of course based on inference - is that the sets marked "COYNE" and "COYNE DUBLIN" with the usual arc-shaped lettering were by Maurice. However it seems that Maurice did not always stamp his work when executed in ebony - or more likely, the stamps did not "take" very well on ebony. There is no firm footing at the moment for assessing which sets, if any, were actually made by John Coyne.

The work associated with Maurice is very, very consistent on the inside, so there's a pretty good basis for identifying his work on the basis of precise bore measurement. However if the later John Coyne used the same reamers, it might still be difficult to tell the difference. Peoples' styles, and fashions, do change over time, and the outside appearance of work confidently attributed to Maurice does vary, particularly in the details of mounts. The usual assumption has been that the mount shapes of the deluxe sets got simpler over time, but I don't know of any firm basis for this belief. The mounts on the more 'basic' sets (i.e. 3/4 sets and sets executed in boxwood or fruitwood) are often simpler than on the ebony 3-regulator sets but this may have been a matter of "standard" versus "deluxe" ornamentation.

It appears that Coyne had a number of imitators, and probably several of these were contemporary. The key and mount patters which we nowadays associate with Coyne (and to some extent, Kenna) were in fact in commonplace use on other instruments, so sets that "look" like Coyne superficially may just be following a fashion of the time. I have in my workshop at the moment a set that "looks" very Coyne on the outside - more so that the set on offer in this thread - but the inside tells a different story - and the bores are not oversize, so it appears that the difference cannot be due to aftermarket re-boring.

I think the NPU set (the one Nollaig has had) is Maurice, BTW, and my best guess, for what it's worth, is that all of the well-known Coyne sets being played are Maurice's.

It was Brogan who restored the Ennis set, and Mulchrone who made reeds for it in Seamus Ennis' middle years (until Mulchrone died).

Bill

[Brazenkane]

Excellent post Bill! Thanks for that.

[rorybbellows]

Its unsafe to disregard a set of pipes that would seem to be made by a certain pipemaker on the internal dimensions, as this assumes that the pipemaker never experimented with different bores.
Highly experienced art historians can tell if a painting is by a certain painter by the way the paint has been applied to the canvas.I think its possible that if you see enough of a certain pipemakers work you would see certain idiosyncrasies unique to that maker . There is also more chance (as we have sadly seen too often) that pipes are altered internally than externally and for that reason it would be more reliable to extensively study a pipemakers brush strokes as it were.

RORY

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

I seem to remember Bil saying this set isn't actually stamped with anything; that might be my remembrance from correspondence with him; at any rate a close up pic of any stamps should be provided if indeed it does have any such markings. Lack of them doesn't subtract much from the price, sets from the golden era of pipemaking are quite rara avis.

Some parts of the restoration don't look like Geoff's work either, the Lynch-esque drone switch or the Stephenson-esque chanter top. If it winds up in my hands I'd redo those - have the chanter holes properly repaired too.

A sound sample of the drones and regulators should be provided too, just to hear what they sound like, even if they're not in tune at the moment; the ad claims the "Set's fully going.," after all.

That's interesting about the Coynes and ebony, Bill; has someone really gazed hard at the Ennis set with a loupe? O'Flynn said the thing isn't stamped at all, but I've heard a few stories about pipers not realizing what they were looking at, even with sets they'd owned for 20 years+.

[Uilliam]

Rory old chap... gi yer heed a rest....when ye know its time to bow oot then do so wi some grace.

Bill has extensively studied the Coyne phenomena and I would consider him an expert in this particular field.

Yer reference to the Art world, whilst romantic in a sort of naive way, is really a bit misleading, or as I would prefer to say, but decency and respect fer ye prevents me.."a load o bollax."

Artists have their imitators too and have fooled experts in the past.

Back to this set. Whit Bill says is more than good enough fer me. It is reasoned fact.

I would say his liitle finger probably knows more aboot Coyne than your entire...(put in here whitever ye like )

Love and Peace to the World etc etc..
Uilliam

[jon1908]

All this discussion of which Coyne made these pipes is all very nice (and probably unanswerable until Bill measures the bores) but surely the most identifiable part of these pipes are the regs. i.e. made without ( I presume) the Cnat and A keys. How many other sets are there in existence with this feature and who are the makers?

For what it's worth, I'd say the windcap was Coyne - certainly not Stephenson ( although we could ask the man himself )

But then again, I'm no expert - But that's never stopped other people!

Jon