Highland bagpipe chanter, possibly half-size

Highland bagpipe chanter, made as a Half-size chanter in the late 19th century. The base of the chanter has been turned and threaded for a sole but this is missing. The chanter has been repaired and the thread bindings are countersunk.

Until recently, about the mid-20th century, pipers would retain damaged and cracked bagpipe chanters and would repair them intricately to keep them playing. They might not be able to afford a replacement and bagpipes were not being mass-produced as they are today. Now we would try to replace a broken chanter immediately and would consider that its quality and acoustic properties had been impaired.

The Highland bagpipe may have been made from native hardwoods such as laburnum or elder, either in the Highlands or in the Lowland burghs. We know little of this trade until the 18th century; from the 1760s we learn about one or two professional makers in Edinburgh and Glasgow such as Hugh Robertson. Their businesses were well situated to obtain raw materials coming off ships trading into the Clyde and Forth, and tropical hardwoods from the Caribbean and African Continent, suitable for turning into musical instruments, came to be preferred for bagpipe making. The number of makers grew significantly in the second half of the 19th century, supplying particularly a demand from pipers in the army and pipe bands. The use of the Great Highland Bagpipe in the army, the development of civilian pipe bands and the growing significance of competition meant that the instrument began to take on a fixed and standard form and proportions, for example with its wide bored chanter and bass and two tenor drones. Skilled craftsmen, often wood turners by profession, began to make the instrument more or less to a fixed pattern and added their decoration of 'beading' and 'combing' which was adopted probably by the late 18th century and has remained unchanged since then.

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