Louis Lot

Paris, France

Stamp: Engraved on head and body: L. L. / LOUIS LOT / PARIS / BREVETÉ. Additionally on head, after Paris: 6434

Comments: This instrument is my favorite of the plated Lot’s that have been known to me. It has a great feel under the fingers, and the very rewarding Louis Lot tone. This flute has has been well loved, well played. Paul Rabinov overhauled it.

Material: This is the model 7, Maillechort flute with silver plating and C foot. Curiously, Maillechort is named after the 1819 inventors, Maillet and Chorier, who mixed copper, nickel and zinc to make a hard, workable, attractive, and cost effective metal. The lip-plate is silver, with hallmarks. The pad washers are all original French metal. The springs are steel, and possibly original. The crown and cork are the metal screw type, and look fresh from the shop inside.

System: This flute is built in the final system of Villette, which remains largely unaltered to this day. It has a C foot, side G#, and Bb trill. There are no adjusting screws. The right hand uses the hanging T, and the footjoint is pinless. The scale seems to be the classic A=435-438 French scale, yet the headjoint is untrimmed and the flute plays at A=440 really well. The sounding length is just a whisker over 600 mm; the A=435 flutes were built at 605mm. Thus this appears to be one of the rare Louis Lot flutes intended to play at A=440.
Condition: This flute is a very fine example of the flutes made during Taffanel’s professorship at the Conservatoire. This is the flute his students would receive for first prize at the Conservatoire. The tone is classic Louis Lot, yet the instrument shares a bit of the volume and texture of the 20th century flutes to come. It has been well used, such that the mechanism has had to be swedged, yet entirely unabused. Nothing has been changed from the day of delivery, except the pads and some adjustments to take out key movement. This is a very lovely player, in near perfect condition.

Pitch: Pitched at A=440, apparently originally.

Sounding Length: Sounding length 600 mm

Measurements: Embouchure 11.9 x 10.0. Riser 4.22mm/ 4.39mm. Tube thickness .014″

Weight: 384 g.

Case: In possibly the original case, which is in poor condition.

This flute is in excellent original condition, and is a lovely player. It was one of the few Lots originally made to play at A=440.

The clear and precise lines of Barat show that he was more stable than the talented yet yet occasionally wayward Debonneetbeau. Indeed, Barat brought the firm back into favor after earlier issues with Altés. The trill key is to Bb, unlike the previous B trill of Lot.

Barat’s footjoint touches show a bit more curve on top of the teardrop D# key than his predecessor’s, and a new beveled design just to the right of the C# roller.

No plating is missing from the thumb key, showing that this flute was carefully used, and not to excess. The thumb key tail has an elegant curve, possible since the trill is now to Bb.

The underside of the footjoint keys shows the original French pad washers, and the very fine finishing work of Barat.

These are the classic Louis Lot tone holes. The rims are cut with a curve to the thinned top edge. Barat actually also offered toneholes with straight tapered rims. The solder seam is visible where the toneholes meet the tube.

Although the body and keys are plated, the lipplate is of silver. Here we see the hallmarks used by the firm at this time. The diamond shape has inside, as registered by H. Villette c. 1877. The other stamp is a boar’s head, indicating silver of Paris manufacture.

The beautiful lipplate and crown are completely original, with very little wear. Inside the headjoint under the crown looks brand new. The embouchure measures 11.9 x 10.0 mm.

Although the case is damaged and missing one end, the flute has miraculously survived without any harm. We cannot guarantee that they were together when the accident happened!

Louis Lot

Paris, France

Stamp: On headjoint only: L. L. / LOUIS-LOT/ PARIS/ 281/ BREVETÉ

Comments: This beautiful instrument displays the absolute simplicity of the Louis Lot flute. It took absolute genius to render Theobald Boehm’s lengthy ideas into the perfect simplicity of this flute. The original record exists for this flute, and reads: “15 Mai 1858. Doit Petiton à Paris Une flute Cylindrique, tubes et cléfs en argent descendant à l’Ut, avec boite velour bleu, No.(281)…………….365″”.” Thus we have here a flute of silver with a C foot, in a case with blue velour interieur, evidently ordered by Petiton (of Paris, at the instructor’s discount price of 365 francs, when the list price for Lot’s model 5 was 500 francs. Today, the case for this flute, which may be original, is stamped in gold on the top, “A. GELLE”. From Gelle, the instrument made its way to Mr. Vito Pascucci, former owner of the G. Leblanc Corporation. Prior to and just after Vito’s retirement, many instruments were discarded or donated to needy students. This flute was among the instruments to be discarded. The current owner rescued it from the dumpster and was given permission to keep it. This instrument weighs much less than any other flute we have weighed. At 322 grams (11.5 oz), it is 22 grams less than #1551, and 45 grams lighter than #742. The silver tubes are very thin. The headjoint is between 9-10 thousands of an inch, and the body about 13 thousands. This instrument to exemplifies the beautiful and rich tones for which Louis Lot has long been famous. This flute, Louis Lot’s 40th silver flute, would have been made for players and audiences more used to the old wooden sound.

Material: Made of silver, with silver lipplate. Steel springs. Gilt pad washers. Open hole grommets appear replaced with later Lot grommets, or they were made with an unusually large overhang into the open hole. Cork screw of turned wood with silver cap.

System: This is Louis Lot’s model 5, silver flute with C foot. Trill to the thumb B key. Dorus G#.

Condition: We have graphed the tone hole placement from this flute onto Boehm’s schema. As far as I can tell (and I find the schema confusing), this flute was made at A=438, just as one might expect. The headjoint has been cut an extra 3 mm.

Pitch: We have graphed the tone hole placement from this flute onto Boehm’s schema. As far as I can tell (and I find the schema confusing), this flute was made at A=438, just as one might expect. The headjoint has been cut an extra 3 mm. Plays well at 440.

Sounding Length: Current sounding length is 586 mm. with the headjoint all the way in.

Measurements: Embouchure wall 4.7 mm. Emb 11.75 x 10.2. Scale 220.5 mm

Weight: 322

Case: The case may very well be original, although the gold stamped name “A. GELLE”, and certainly the ridiculous strap lock, appear later. The flute fits perfectly in the case.

The entire headjoint has been heavily buffed, yet the number 281 is clearly visible.

The right hand mechanism shows the extraordinarily effective simplicity of the Lot design.

The Dorus G# was extremely clever. Cleverness was generally eschewed in favor of simplicity, and the side G#, as soon as it was invented, had a slight edge.

The keys on this flute are heavily worn from use, not from buffing, judging by the direction of wear.

The body is unstamped, yet is clearly a very early Lot body. Of course, it has a one-piece strap.

The thumb key retains the beautiful ball-end, which Lot introduced many years earlier on the Godfroy model conical flutes. This was eventually abandoned.

This sweet and early backclutch is remarkably undamaged, considering the love for buffing seen elsewhere on this flute.

The crown is original, and uses the turned wooden corkscrew inside.

The lipplate and headjoint received a knock at some point, causing the seam to part ever so slightly. This has been repaired with a silver strap, and the lip was resoldered on, including some extra solder where the tube was slightly out of round. Everything looks original, nonetheless.

Louis Lot

Paris, France

Stamp: Engraved on headjoint: L. L. / LOUIS-LOT / PARIS / 1584. On body, possibly stamped: L. L. / LOUIS-LOT / PARIS / 1584. Footjoint unmarked.

Comments: This is an extraordinary flute.; perhaps from the elegant engraved lip-plate at the top and the mysterious obelisk at the bottom. Everything in between is perfect Louis Lot, at yet another highpoint of his workshop. This flute was purchased in 1946 by Sunna Gerber, one of the first professional woman flautists in Switzerland. She purchased this flute while a student of André Jauret’s at the Zurich Conservatory. Jauret assisted in the purchase of this instrument from the orchestra in Vienna, which needed a piano. Sunna Gerber became a member of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, and toured Europe as a soloist with this orchestra. She played this flute, and other players often admired it in her travels. Sunna Gerber became the first woman professor of the flute in Switzerland, at the Zurich Conservatory. Mrs. Gerber writes that she, “wishes to the new owner of the instrument all the best and she likes to give the part of the history of this Louis Lot flute to the next lucky owner.” Suna Gerber was my professor of lute at the Zurich conservatory. This beautiful flute has undergone complete restoration by Paul Rabinov, and has emerged in her full glory.

Material: The tube and keys and lipplate are silver. The springs are of steel, which is also normal for this shop. Lot’s colleagues, Theobald Boehm and Carl Mendler, were the only ones using gold springs at this time. The pad washers may have been originally gilt (gilding mostly lost). Louis Lot had a very holistic attitude towards his flutes. This is especially seen in his pad washers. Lot meticulously shaped the washers with a graceful curve, and then gold plated them, to treat the singing air with the utmost respect. Over time, the added curves disappeared, but for a long while the gilding did not. The washer for the top G#, and the grommets for the F and Bb appear replaced with, probably, later Lot parts.

System: This is Lot’s model 5, silver flute with C foot. This has been the most popular flute model ever designed. Since it’s introduction by Lot and Godfroy around 1850, virtually every flutemaker has adopted design elements from this model. The trill is to B. For many years, flutists used this lever to trill the thumb key, giving a B to C trill. Lot called this a C trill, incidentally. After Lot’s retirement, sometime in the 1880’s, the use of this trill to close the Bb key, on top of the flute, became widespread. The topside clutches are Lot and Godfroy’s original shoulder clutches, before the “hanging T” clutch was invented. These clutches, along with the ingenious “back-clutch” constitute Lot’s ability to synthesize disparate parts into a simple whole, making order out of the chaos of Boehm’s invention. The lipplate is the “over and under”, or Top Hat style, with a full flange on the top and bottom of the chimney. We believe that this is the special “embouchure unié” Lot mentions in his record book, starting with flute #740 in 1863. This embouchure design gives considerably greater support to the lipplate, and allows a thinner piece of silver. Furthermore, the plate can be soft-soldered to the chimney flange. The lipplate is cut with Lot’s “Guilloché” pattern. This is a machined engraving, using a special tool. It was an extra order, and was one of Lot’s few nods towards the machine age. The guilloché cut gives the player more control at the lip, and adds elegance to the flute. The tone holes are graduated. There are three basic sizes, 14.5mm (left hand), 15.2 mm (right hand), and 16.5 mm (foot). Boehm also believed in graduated holes, but they were more expensive to manufacture, he said. The footjoint is the original pinned design with backclutch. This beautiful and elegant footjoint was first designed by Lot and Godfroy shortly after purchasing the cylindrical patent rights in 1847. It was immediately adapted by most flutemakers, whether for simple-system or new model flutes. I believe that Lot continued to use this pinned foot, although the modern pinless foot was introduced around his retirement. The tail of the low C key rests on the mysterious obelisk that Lot used for a few years at this time. There is something special about this obelisk, which shows up on some of the Lot company’s tastiest flutes. Louis Lot eschewed complication. There is no real benefit from this obelisk, which simply replaces the longer tail generally in use. It is highly possible that this is an artistic choice, invoking a special meaning unrelated to efficiency.

Condition: This flute has been fully restored by Paul Rabinov. She has been returned to her magnificence.

Pitch: Originally pitched at New Pitch, or A=435-438. Has been used professionally at a higher pitch. Currently set up for A=440.

Sounding Length: Current sounding length 595 mm.; original c.604 mm.

Measurements: Headjoint was cut 9 mm (6 mm replaced). Scale is 22.7mm, or about A=438. Chimney 5.1 mm. Embouchure 10.4 x 12.4 mm.

Weight: 3

This photo shows the brilliant, elegant, and above all simple, clutch designs which have made the Boehm system possible. Under the two keys to the left are little shoulders, pinned to the steel rod inside the silver tubes. This rod is also pinned to the F# key, whose pinned rear is seen in the “backclutch photo” in the middle of the backclutch. The F key is connected to the right side of the back clutch, which extends all the way under the F# spade and the left hand spade, which is pinned to the Bb rod. The knob in the middle of the backclutch top is the “kingpost”, which separates the right hand from the left hand mechanism.

This is the “independent” G#, invented by Lot or Godfroy, probably in the late 1850’s. The earliest attempt at this key is seen on Godfroy silver flute #600, which makes dating the Godfroy flutes even trickier. Here we also see the remains of an old swedging to the left of the G#, and the slight increase in key size at the far left cup. The B trill touch curves gracefully to the left, in aesthetic communion with the G# touch below.

This flute is in excellent condition, considering practically constant professional use for many decades. Most of the restoration work was to correct mechanical wear, not damage.

The upper strap, curving down to include the trill keys, was split by Villette, Lot’s successor. This is the first place to look to see if a body is by Lot himself. In this case, the name and serial number are stamped on the body as well.

Lot’s beautiful thumb keys taper to the right, where the top key fits under a tail pinned to the upper rod, to which the Bb key is also pinned, thus giving a Briccialdi Bb. The lower key fits over it’s tail, which is connected to the B trill lever (today a Bb trill). During padding the spring broke on the upper thumb key, and had to be replaced.

The back clutch is a central element in Lot’s mechanism. While the “loop clutch”, as Boehm called it, is not unique, Lot’s design made it functional.

The headjoint is engraved with Louis Lot’s personal stamp, which includes a hyphen in his name.

The beautiful tear-drop touch for the D# is another Lot and Godfroy design, abandoned by Lot’s retirement.

Lot offered guilloché embouchures from March 14, 1862, when he made a gold one for Vène of Bruxelles. We do not know if he had a machine in his shop or sent out for his engraving. The pattern would have been cut while the plate was flat.