| Silver and Ivory Lawries
Overview |
I believe that the owner of the Tartan
Shop at the time of the sale was Robert Kulyn of Tipp
City, Ohio. I was directed to him by Angus
MacDonald of the Wee Hoose in 1993 for questions about
the history of my Celluloid mounted Lawrie's. He
seemed to be an attorney and had been the one of the
owners of R.G. Lawrie until just before this time. He
claimed to know little about the company. The chanter is marked as Lawrie, not "R.G. Lawrie, Glasgow, ReGaL" as many of the pipes from the 1950's were marked, nor is it marked with the warrant symbol. The chanter is virtually a perfect concert B-flat instrument. The wall construction is quite thin and rather unlike earlier ReGal chanters. It has a fine rich tone - again unlike many of the earlier chanters. In several of the photo's you may notice that there is a light colored wooden "rush" in the chanter and considerable tape over the holes. This is due to the need to play the instrument at concert A shortly after many of these photos were taken. The "rush" was unstained oak. The unmodified chanter can be seen in some photos. The hallmark date is a cause for some concern due to the known facts that R.G. Lawrie was merged with Hector Russel at about that time and questions about the origin of the ivory since this was post CITES. I've recently been able to reach an employee who worked for R.G. Lawrie. D&N silver was used by R.G. Lawrie after some point in the 1970's when the firms own silversmiths were let go. There are no hemp stops. The drones tune, without much fiddling to concert pitch A. The bass drone tends to tune "low". |