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Set of bagpipes with bass and tenor drones in a common stock

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possibly made by Hugh Robertson, Edinburgh, late 18th century

Set of bagpipes with bass and tenor drones in a common stock
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Set of bagpipes, bellows-blown with bass and tenor drones in a common stock. Bass drone in four sections looped to reduce the overall size of the instrument, returning through the stock and joined with a brass U-bend; single reed of cane is set in the drone and tuned with a drop of black cobbler's wax on the tongue. Tenor drone with two joints; single reed of cane is set in the drone and tuned with a drop of wax. Drone stock is fitted with a drone stop of brass tipped with ivory, closing with a soft leather pad over a brass air inlet pipe. Made of temperate hardwood, stained, brass and ivory mounted. Regulator and chanter missing. Possibly the work of Hugh Robertson, Edinburgh.

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.

This piece comes from the Glen and Ross Collection of musical instruments which were preserved in the shop of 'J & R Glen, Highland Bagpipe Makers' until it closed about 1978. This was the business founded in 1827 by Thomas McBean Glen in the Cowgate in Edinburgh, dealing in and repairing musical instruments. His brother, Alexander Glen, specialized in bagpipe-making and was succeeded by his son David. Thomas' sons, John and Robert Glen, succeeding to the business in 1866, probably did most to collect instruments and their antiquarian interests were carried on by Andrew Ross who acquired the business from the Glens in 1947. The National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland purchased the bagpipe collections from the family in 1983.

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