British Flutemakers: Angus Harris

Roger 'Angus' Harris: A Rudall Carte Flutemaker

Roger (Angus) Harris at the FMG workshop


Just before VE Day, a lad straight from school began his apprenticeship at Rudall Carte in London. Roger Harris had wanted to follow his father into carpentry. But his father, a keen musician on piano and flute, decided his son would be better off learning his trade at one of the world’s finest flute workshops.


The Rudall Carte workshop in Berners Street, just north of Oxford Street in London, had been ticking over during the war. Now the other craftsmen returned from the services. The large oblique windows on the top floor that allowed natural light to flood the workbenches, all of which had been shattered by bomb blasts during the Blitz, were reglazed. The newest member of staff began his career sweeping the floor, brewing tea, lighting fires in the grates, and making pads. Everyone had a nickname, and discovering that Roger’s father had been in the Scots Guards was enough for him to be called “Angus”, a name that he kept and was always known by in the flute world.

Angus moved on to repairing flutes and other instruments, including bassoons. In 1949 he left for on national service, and returned in 1951. Rudall Carte shortened his apprenticeship, no doubt because he had progressed so quickly, and after one year’s ‘improver’ was accepted full time.

 

The next apprentice to be employed, Roger Charters, remembers Angus as “a lovely lad... with a phenomenal memory. For instance, when it was his turn to go out to the cafe to fetch lunch for everyone he would remember the orders perfectly, whereas if I didn’t write them down I’d get it wrong. And he was a very good flute player. He played in the Lloyds Orchestra in the City of London.” Angus was in fact such a fine flautist that his father took him for an audition at the Royal College of Music, though for whatever reason he continued his apprenticeship.

 

Like his father, Angus played the 1867-Patent system, and the foreman and other craftsmen were only too pleased to give him any work that came in on such a difficult mechanism. One day the foreman sent him to a cupboard packed with unsold High Pitch (A=452.5) 1867-Patent flutes. “There were loads of them on the shelves,” Angus recalled. “Some had been there for years and years, covered with dust. I had to take them out and use bits off them and try to make a Boehm flute. I’d have to use what I could, the keycups and all, but there was a lot of keywork to make, and you had to lengthen the strap to fit a modern-pitch (A=440) body.”

 

This turned out to be an excellent way to learn the practical business of keymaking without the pressure of producing a flute to order. That was the next stage, and Angus went on to make flutes in Monel, an alloy that Rudall Carte had popularised before the war, and then finally he was entrusted with crafting silver mechanisms.


Angus Harris Rudall Carte Flute Workshop

‘You had to be flexible there,’ Angus recalled. ‘Sometimes there was a lull in silver flutes to be made, so you made a German Silver (nickel) one if required. If there was nothing new to be made, you did some repairs.’

 

When an order came in, a bell would ring on the foreman’s desk in the workshop. Len Hinde was the foreman at that time, and he would go through to the showroom and return with the specification of the required flute on a piece of paper, where silver or wooden body, open or closed G#, open or closed holes, etc. He would decide which flutemaker was best suited to the job and give him that piece of paper. The maker would then have a certain amount of time to complete the flute, up to four weeks for a Boehm-system, a bit longer for an 1867.

 

Each craftsman was on piecework, paid for the job on completion. He had to buy his own tools. Swiss files were particular prized. The atmosphere in the workshop was friendly and enthusiastic, and the experienced makers always looked to help and advise their juniors. Work began each day at 8 o’clock, but the staff would gather in a nearby cafe half an hour earlier to enjoy a sociable cup of tea. Amongst the younger makers was Harry Seeley, who had joined in 1956, and had learned about Boehm flutemaking from Angus. Only Fred Handke, the greatest and most experienced maker, responsible for gold flutes and those ordered by the top players, kept apart, working in one corner with his own lathe that no-one else touched, and always referred to as ‘Mr Handke’.

Just before Angus Harris joined Rudall Carte, the company had been bought by Boosey & Hawkes, a company that was more concerned with mass producing barely adequate instruments than supporting the tradition of fine handmade craftsmanship. B & H made no investment into the Berners Street workshop. One of the craftsmen I spoke to couldn’t bring himself even to say its name. The greatest flutemakers of their generation were having to make do with worn-out treadle lathes and gas burners for soldering. The heavier machines on the floor below, including the wood lathes on which the bodies and headjoints were turned, ran from a belt just under the ceiling that set their floor shaking. When a flutemaker needed to do some fine work he would take a pole, drop it down through a secret hole that had been bored through the floor, and displace the belt, giving himself some peace until the belt was set right again.

 

In 1958 Boosey & Hawkes had a particularly bad year. They had bought up Wheatstone’s, the famous old concertina maker, and decided to close Berners Street and move the flutemakers there. A year later, in December 1959, cutting costs again, Boosey & Hawkes moved flutemaking to their Denman Street workshop, which was noisy and uncongenial. The older craftsmen retired. Angus left and went to work for Selmer’s in Charing Cross Road, where he enjoyed his time repairing the various wind instruments that came through the door, just as he had in his apprenticeship. He also got married to Maureen, a friend of his sister.

 

His old colleagues, meanwhile, were equally disillusioned with Boosey & Hawkes. In 1961 a group of them set up a new company, Flutemakers Guild (FMG). This was to be a return to fine flutemaking. Harry Seeley invited Angus to join them. Their new foreman was Ewen McDougall, who had begun his apprenticeship at Rudall Carte in March 1950. As before, each craftsman was responsible for a flute in its entirity. But the FMG workshop was equipped with modern tools, and the flutemakers wasted no time in improving working techniques as casting and soldering.


Demand for FMG silver flutes was strong from the start. In 1963 the company received an order for an 1867-Patent flute. The work naturally fell to Angus. But there were no castings – they had been lost when the Berners Street workshop had closed. So he had to make each piece of keywork individually. The result was the last of its kind, and remarkably it is still owned and played by the man who commissioned it.

 

Gradually, with the return to popularity of wooden flutes, Angus and his colleagues went back to the heritage in which they had been apprenticed. There were also commissions for piccolos, alto and bass flutes, and G-trebles. The company was so successful that it took on apprentices. Each maker had some little identifying design quirk. “I used to do something on the thumb Bb key,” Angus explained. “Going down from the head it will be round till you got to the barrel. Then it would go into a V till under the lever. Half and half. So if it’s half V and half rounded then it’s one of mine. I did that. Little things like that made them individual.”

 

Wages at FMG, however, hardly matched what a skilled craftsman might expect. And Angus’ commute to North London from his home in Wallington, Surrey, was hardly an easy one. Eventually he left to take a job at a Ford manufacturing plant just a ten minute walk from his back door. Maureen was astonished when she saw how much fatter his first wage packet was. Despite some trepidation at going to work in a large factory, he found the place congenial. “It was mainly small pressings for the door winding mechanisms,” Angus remembered; “and for the windows, brackets for springs, and all the smaller body panels.”

 

Angus worked for fifteen years at Ford, retiring in 1996. But his flute career was not over; in fact it was about to enter an Indian summer. On meeting up with Harry Seeley he learned that FMG was down to only two craftsmen, the younger flutemakers having left. The company had an overflowing order book for wooden flutes. Thus it was that Angus returned to the FMG workshop in Shacklewell Road, working three days per week and carrying parts home to continue work there. His standards were as high as ever, so if he noticed even the slightest imperfection in a flute he would take it all apart and start again. He also produced the cases, while Maureen made the pads, stamping felt with a circular cutter.

 

This final series of flutes by Angus Harris and Harry Seeley is widely regarded as the peak of British wooden flutemaking. Each body is thinned, so the wood is hand carved to leave the toneholes proud. This took a lot of very skillful work, but it gives these flutes extra resonance and decreases their weight. The late David Shorey regarded these as the finest wooden flutes ever made, and the list of customers reads as a who’s-who of international flautists.

Angus Harris Flutemakers Guild Flute

Angus’ first flute in this series of seven was a commission from Sebastian Bell, after whose death it went to the USA where it later sold in New York for $14,000. Angus’ second made its way to Jonathan Myall, who says that one of his regrets is not keeping it for himself. Instead a prominent player, whiling away an afternoon in his shop, began blowing it and was surprised to be told shortly afterwards that he had been playing non-stop for several hours and the shop was about to close. The prominent player took out his cheque book and remains its proud owner.

 

The end of FMG came shortly after Harry Seeley was forced by ill health to retire. Angus completed his final flute in April 1999. “There were still orders for wooden flutes,” Angus recalled. “There was no shortage of work. It seemed to be that everyone wanted one. Many were orders from the continent, particularly Germany. It took off, but when you are down to two people you can’t produce them. It wasn’t a short job making a one. You’ve got to make the wooden body, and make the keywork and put it on - it’s a long job.”

 

Angus retired but continued to craft beautiful objects at home, including animal figures and a Welsh dresser for his wife. Maureen remembers him as ‘Meticulous, quietly-spoken, unassuming, with a keen sense of humour – a perfectionist.’ Roger Harris died on March 12th 2019. In Harry Seeley’s estimation, “Angus” was one of the finest of flutemakers, on the same exalted level as the great Fred Handke. His flutes, still so sought after, attest to that.

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