Anyone who knows of any lady instrument makers, put your hands up please!

Just curious… I play the flute… well, I’m learning… and I’m aware of the many talented flute makers out there but I’ve never heard of a lady flute maker nor have I heard of any ladies making other instruments… at least not amongst those names which drop in conversations…. so here are my two questions:

1) Does anyone know or has heard of a good lady instrument maker?
2) And why does it appear that instrument making is a bit of a guy thing?

Just curious because as yee all know I’m growing a beard, and I’m wondering if that will open up future job opportunities in the diddley sawdust industry😉

All logical and illogical explanations welcome🙂

Instrument making is often a family business, and the wife gets drawn in, even if the husband’s name is the one that gets touted.

Both Marcus Music and John Dipper, concertina makers in the UK, have wives involved in making the bellows (I believe).

For concertinas it makes a lot of sense, as their smaller hands would be useful in greaching inside the bellows.

Toronto recently had France’s Noemie Viaud visiting for a year. She makes fiddles and nykleharpa and is a good fiddler to boot. I think she’s in Denmark now.

I have made three guitars, I can’t help you with a flute maker. I did the three with a teacher’s help, and am about to make my fourth over the winter on my own.

I have also started doing some work for a local luthier, idiot work, but also somewhat skilled, like sanding between coats of finishes. it has to be done “just so”, you don’t want to sand down to bare wood in spots. Next he will have me make braces his way. I am not accepting pay from him, it is pretty sporadic, as he only makes about eight a year, and if you could hear and see these, they are really high end very expensive instruments that require a lot of time, some have a price tag close to $20,000, they are exquisite and among the best I have ever heard. Instead of pay, since I have next to no tools at this point, I am going to trade my time helping him for some tool borrowing and also those HELP calls, where I feel stuck on something.

I think it’s that girls are not brought up playing with tools. They should be. They should be encouraged to take wood shop in school, I was in school quite a long time ago, so maybe they do now. We had to take sewing and cooking. Cooking was fun, we got to eat it all afterwards, and I think the boys should take cooking too if they want…..but I hated sewing and still do. I was terrified of the tools at first, especially the noisy ones like the routers. I would have also loved to take auto shop in high school, they said no way!

I have no intention of working as a luthier, but then again many people are trying to buy one of my guitars. I keep making a different one though, so am inclined thus far to keep them all. The fourth may well be a repeat of an earlier one, so I won’t be attached to it so much. The tools for this trade are pretty expensive, so it would be good to sell one and buy some nice tools, a $500 side bender would be great to have instead of a small bending iron for example. Good tools make the job easier.

There are a few other “girl” guitar builders out there. One in Canada whose name I forget, and a Japanese-American English teacher from San Diego, who does this on the side.

There is no reason you shouldn’t try out instrument making. You have hands, eyes, a brain like anyone else who can do it. You may not think you have the talent, but instrument making for the most part is very methodical, you need to just take the steps in the right order with the right tools. Farm yourself out to a builder or take a class. I would discourage doing it yourself the first time though, you might make a mess. I thought I could do this once and know how and was very mistaken on that, three goes around now I feel better about it.

Half of “talent” too, I feel, is just confidence. The attitude that you CAN and WILL do it, realize you will make mistakes, but so what, you learn from them, and sometimes mistakes are a happy accident too that you may like to incorporate into your work. I make jewelry and made an etched bronze design with a poem, all entwined with Celtic knotwork, for the headstock logo (also 12th fret marker). It had a little round knot at the bottom too. After inlaying it… I said to the teacher, DO NOT SAND IT! It did not have much depth and couldn’t take it. He didn’t listen, and sanded half the design off the little knot at bottom before realizing I was right. So…. since it could not be repaired, I glued a jewel in a gold bezel over it, and it looked so nice, i keep on doing it! That was a good mistake.

So just go for it…. find someone to help you out and just try it! Sometimes you are better off paying for a class, my teacher is in PA if you are interested in guitar making. It’s a seven day intensive with just four students, it’s a killer week, but so much fun. You don’t have to play either to be a luthier. The one I am helping out now builds some of the world’s best and can’t play at all. He calls in friends to test them. Really!

Lynne Lewandowski, Catherine Campbell and Betty Truitt in the US make harps. When Caswell harps were originally in production, Teresa made them as well as then husband Chris, but you’d never know it from the promotional material. I know there are other women harp makers out there, but I can’t call any other names to mind just now.

There’s a woman in Louisiana who makes violins named Deborah-Helen Viator. I have one of her violins and really love it.

http://hometown.aol.com/viaviolins/index.html

Heike Horstmann builds pipes at Andreas Rogge’s workshop, Anne Marie Bekkaye builds harps in Munic, and there are at least three lady recorder makers (the high-end kind): Adriana Breukink, Margret Loebner and Jaqueline Sorel.

I guess instrument making is not more a guy thing than so many other professions which are not typical for women. It changes, but slowly. If you want to build flutes, go for it!

peace,
Sonja

I know of two women who build mountain dulcimers: Janita Baker of Blue Lion (with her husband Robert), and they also build guitars, and Kerry Anderson in Arizona. But that said, there are a lot more men building them than women.

I think Iris is right -- for many of us it’s a generational thang. When I was in school girls did cooking and sewing and boys did shop and mechanical drawing. I only know of one girl who fought the system to take mechanical drawing, because her dream was to become an architect -- and she succeeded in both!

Twenty plus years ago when I was working in a museum in Chicago the head of the exhibit design department nearly fainted when I picked up an electrical drill to make a hole in a block for dowel to support the object I was mounting. I think he would have been less shocked if I’d pulled off my shirt. But then he was a wierd one anyway -- working late one night, I said to him “I’m starving, let’s take a break and grab a bite to eat?” I didn’t realize that in his dialect that translated as “would you like to take me out to dinner and have sex afterwards?”. Neanderthal.

Helen Michetschlager is a top class UK violin maker.
Nice website at helenviolinmaker.com

Gail Hester, Mandolin maker in NW USA.

Does there have to be discrimination or is it maybe just something that not so many women want to do, for perfectly legitimate reasons?

I’d be interested if anyone wants to argue that being a good maker doesn’t involve being, to some degree, a) solitary, b) obsessive.

Stacey O’Gorman of Alba Whistles. Anita Evans and her husband Richard make SSP and NSP. Julie Say and her husband Barry also make NSP. Marlene Boegli does all the silver work for Dave Copley.

chadmills, do you think women are less likely to be solitary and obsessive?

I’m a woman, and both, to various degrees throughout life so far.

I have built a harp in a guided workshop (3 weeks) btw, and it was great 😉

(which doesn’t make me a harp maker of course)

M & E Cronnolly = Michael and Evelyn Cronnolly

Seems that only Michael makes the flutes, so this doesn’t really positively answer your question, but the flute at least bares a woman’s name, well, initial really.

(I’ve played the an M&E for 5 years and only just found out the other day what it actually stood for)

I’ve just had a quick look at Helen Michetschlager’s website
http://www.helenviolinmaker.com/, referred to above. There are wonderful photos in the “work in progress” section showing in detail how she makes her instruments.

Eva Kingma makes really, really big contrabass flutes. http://www.kingmaflutes.com

Kathy Wingert guitars. http://www.wingertguitars.com/isg.shtml

I have great respect for people who make instruments, so it’s nice to know there are women amongst them too🙂, and from what I can see, it looks quite a few do undercover work in workshops…

… and we even have a lady instrument maker in our midst… so good on you, Iris🙂

Also, I’m really enjoying the links🙂

Less likely, yes, on the basis of personal experience, which obviously could be distorted.
Stats on Aspergerishness, from the very mildest versions, don’t seem to accord with the equal opportunities agenda!

Kate…. Oh… I am on the floor….. hysterical! Yes… I have naively, and ever into my current old age come across similar….ahem….situations! I don’t mean the drill either!LOL. Still, the router, though I have never messed up on it, I am intimidated by it. I have gotten over drills, band saws, sanders etc. I will likely end up making the next guitar with a pocket knife!

Chadmills…. You are right on that, personally, I am fairly solitary and very obsessive. And a perfectionist, it all adds up to some pretty bad mental self-torture at times, but then at the end you have this wonderful instrument, so I carry on. It’s just worth it, so I ignore myself mentally while working if that makes any sense! I work as a paper marbler (for book restoration) and also a jeweler, do both at home alone, and am quite obsessive and solitary as a rule….. unless out at a session of course! But the work is so satisfying, I am combining things now and making Celtic Guitar (and other instrument) jewelry out of silver, brass, bronze gold, whatever. It always seems one obsession leads to another, and you have less and less time. The ideas flow when you are alone.

I don’t think it’s a discriminatory thing in the slightest, not nowadays anyway, just that we were brought up letting the guys have the tools that made loud noises while we were confined to cooking and sewing. There’s nothing stopping a female these days making instruments, especially home alone, where no one will bother you.

My father, on the other hand all he wanted to do was cook, and he was super.He was half Mexican half Breton…. now imagine the smells growing up in my house! He was really obsessive about the cooking, so this goes both ways…. he was thought odd, he’d come home from work, put on his apron and make dinner. Surely his “orientation” must have been questioned back in the 50’s and 60’s.

If the label be Asbergers, Chadmills, so be it! Bring it on, I am having the best time making these guitars. I just hope to not end up with a million of them. There are so many models to make, so many different woods to try out, and they all sound different, even with little modifications, like scalloping the braces or not… it makes a difference. And you know obsessive people have to have at least one of each, LOL!!

The best thing about it, as a player, for 43 years now, I have been looking for the RIGHT guitar. The closest I ever came to perfection was my ol LoPrinzi and Ed Foley’s guitars. Still, not 100%. When you make your own, you can say, I want this or that in it, and just do it. The action on a store bought steel string is often set up for more popular bluegrass playing…. I like mine way low, for fingerstyle tunes on one…. and another for backing, a little higher, just so you can be strong on the attack without buzzing.

this last one, it was advised, since it was destine to be mostly a backer, was to NOT scallop the braces. That is almosytsacrilege these days, it is a bragging point for many guitars. I wanted punch out of it, more than depth, so this little change did it just right.

The next will, hopefully, be the ultimate recording guitar. Bright and balanced, not too deep, it will take a little thought and advice as to how to achieve that.

So…. yes, this requires a lot of obsession, and what better state to obsess in than to be alone? So let it snow outside, I’ll be holed up in the basement making a mess!

PS…. there are pix of the first two…. third coming soon, go about 3/4 down the page….forgive the lousy photography:

www.hearts-content.net

This link should work…..

http://www.hearts.content.net

hopefully

GEEEE>>>>> SORRY…. can that one…. rushing too much

http://www.hearts-content.net

Penelope Swales from Victoria (Australia) makes a variety of instruments from gourds for the zany folk group “Totally Gourdgeous”.
http://www.totallygourdgeous.com/

Great site GreameO! I recently gave someone a book that show how to make fiddles out of a wooden shoe… like a dutch clog!! What fun!

Chadmills, they used to think Asperger’s was by definition almost exclusively male, but now they know that female Aspies simply are better at passing for something in the neighborhood of “normal”. Probably the result of different socialization patterns of males and females in Western culture. But there are lots of us women on the spectrum, and many of us were diagnosed in adulthood.

BTW, several women work in the instrument building shop at Dusty Strings.

Thanks! There’s interesting stuff to be learned on the yellow board!

Chad… I always got a laugh out of the double take when I would first walk into the luthier class, they would be expecting a fourth guy. At first, they would hold back on certain things they’d say, like they’d be afraid to curse in front of me, they’d even put the toilet seat back down, but by noon the first day, that “lady is present” stuff all flew out the window.

Not that they were cursing and belching and other stuff as a rule, but they became a little more lax as time went on. Mostly a polite bunch overall…. but the double take on the first morning was always a laugh.

Sandy Jasper, West Coast Whistle Company,
Elf Song penny whistles
Box 293 Ladysmith B.C.
V9G-1A2 Canada
WhistleComapny@shaw.ca
http://www.elfsongwhistles.com/
Sandy makes custom and manufactured whistles. I have one of her custom high D whistles, and love the tone. She is also a great teacher. Her custom whistles include low whistles and chanter whistles.

Laura Ratcliff makes A style mandolins
P. O. Box 76
Elliottville, KY 40317
Telephone: (606) 286-8530
http://www.silverangelmandolins.com/index.html
I have never played one, but I have seen three come up on the classifieds at Mandolin Cafe. They list for about $1500 and sell within hours.

Hands up! Yes!
I am a female harp-maker and have been professionally working since 1994. I make celtic and gothic lever harps. This year I started making ultra-light single-action harps. I do carvings and paintings on harps. Half of my clients are professional musicians.

I also do restorations of historical harps.
My second profession is harp-teacher, I love improvisation!

My homepage is (still) in German, but I speak English and French fluently. Any contact welcome!

Anne-Marie Bekkaye
Kirchenstr. 25
D-81675 Muenchen (Munich)
0049-89-47077698

www.atelier-fuer-harfenbau.de
mailto: bekkayeharfen@aol.com

Linda Manzer
http://www.manzer.com/guitars/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16&Itemid=7

Stephanie Cornelius and her husband, Tim Benson (I don’t know if she changed her surname as they recently got married) are making uilleann pipes in Upstate NY.

Ha yeah - I do go by Benson now. 🙂

I’m an engineer and by way of an unusual career path, was already well-immersed in machine shop culture long before we took up pipe-making.

The hands-on aspect isn’t pushed as an option to most girls in school I think - I was certainly pushed along an aggressive path to be prepared for an education at a university. I do not recall having any opportunity (or interest in) turning wrenches before I accidentally went to a meeting of the Society of Automotive Engineers as a freshman in college.

Tim & I often accuse each other of having started the whole pipe-making thing. I will readily claim that it was his stinking idea first - telling me shortly after we met that I should make pipes. He tells me that it was my idea. Anyway after he moved in I suggested that he get to know how to use a lathe and a mill, and away he went. Pretty soon there appeared to be a pretty viable business case, and I jumped in full-time.

I’ve spent some time studying our manufacturing activities. When I was engaged full-time in the business, our division of labor was about 54/46% him/me. Since our daughter was born and I resumed full-time work as a research engineer, we’ve shifted to about 80/20%. It’s my weekend & night-job now.

I enjoy working with him. I never imagined it would be possible to have constructive technical arguments with one’s spouse, but I pinch myself all the time to have that arrangement here. He’s a good egg.