by Herbert Heyde (1991, revised 2024)
translated by William Waterhouse

Makers’ marks constitute a difficult and somewhat problematic area of organology — though at the same time one that is of considerable importance, since they often furnish the sole indication as to where and in which workshop an instrument may have been made.[1] Several different kinds of inscription and sign are found on wind instruments; they may be classified as follows:

• marks applied by the maker, workshop or factory, as well as by the wholesaler [‘Verleger’] and dealer, to instruments supplied to customers or to the trade; trade names
• hallmarks (ie official inspection marks) confirming the prescribed composition of the raw materials or the quality of workmanship
• references to patents and registered designs; names of models
• signs on the individual components of an instrument indicating [a] that they belong together, [b] their sequence, [c] their fit, [d] their pitch, and [e] that a tuned set of instruments belong together. Model numbers and symbols to indicate bore diameter
• serial numbers
• advertisements (eg an appointment as court supplier, reference to awards conferred)
• inscriptions or stamps of owners or donors.

The ‘signature’ on a work of art or object of commerce, which forms the main subject-matter of what follows, started to gain importance from the late Middle Ages. In the fine arts, this increasing tendency to sign can be ascribed to a growing self-awareness on the part of the artist; in the case of handicrafts, to which wind-instrument making belongs, it was motivated more by trade policy. It should be emphasized that since the 14th century more and more craft-guilds required their masters to put marks on their products. By 1535 ten guilds in Nürnberg were subject to obligatory signing, and by 1629 this was the case with 40 of the 130 guilds then operating there, of which only 13 belonged to non-metal trades.[2]

When in 1625 a ‘sworn-in order’ [‘geschworene Ordnung’] was founded by ten Nürnberg trumpet makers, they not only laid down the requirement to sign, which was customary by then, but also introduced inspection [‘Beschau’] or hallmarking with the object of improving instrument quality. This latter was a policing measure employed primarily in the precious metal, pewter and textile trades to control quality, and to maintain purity standards in precious metals. Since only a few of the surviving trumpets and trombones made out of brass bear the Nürnberg hallmark — a miniature city crest and/or an ‘N’ — it seems unlikely that the inspection of brass instruments was taken very seriously in Nürnberg during the 17th and 18th centuries. Note here that according to a decree of 1640, only those instruments made with good-quality solder qualified for a hallmark.[3]

While the hallmarking of brass instruments was probably peculiar to Nürnberg, that of silver articles in general had existed throughout Europe since the 16th century or earlier; in the German territories of the Holy Roman Empire this was in accordance with a decree passed in 1548 by the Reichstag in Augsburg. The hallmarking procedure was as follows: the object, already bearing master’s signature and sign, was presented before a sworn-in commission of the trumpet-makers’ or goldsmiths’ guild for the verification of its silver content; if found satisfactory, the hallmark was stamped on. In Paris this took the form of a fleur-de-lis, in London a crowned lion’s head or lion rampant.[4] Trumpets in silver were sometimes commissioned from silversmiths or goldsmiths, who would then sub-contract them to a trumpet-maker, but sign them with their own mark. This is the case with the trumpets made for the Dresden Court by the silversmiths Ingermann and Schmey, which are stamped with their names, the Dresden hallmark (‘D’ with the pair of Electoral swords), the fine-content rating of the silver and, in one instance, with a letter standing for the year of manufacture. Such letters were also used at times in other places. In the case of London, the letter ‘K’, for example, stands for 1725/26, and ‘R’ for 1732/33; on reaching the end of the alphabet, the cycle restarted. It was clearly the custom of dating silver objects to prevent fraud that caused a considerable proportion of 16th-18th century metal wind-instruments to be dated. It may be remarked that hallmark initials and fine-content control marks go back to the 15th century, while inspection itself, which was often used to check the quality of even such commodities a s bread and beer, can be traced back to the 13th century, if not before.

All guilds with an obligation to sign kept a register of marks, consisting of either a tablet of sheet-metal or a book, where the mark, the name of its proprietor and the year when he was admitted master was stamped or engraved. Brass tablets bearing the marks of the Nürnberg trumpet-makers from 1614 to 1834 are preserved in the Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum. Based on the evidence of surviving trombones, from 1551 at the earliest the Nürnberg masters signed with their full name and master’s sign, which usually included their initials. Elsewhere even older styles of signing survived into the 17th century. Thus the inscription “Mit Gottes Hilfe gemacht’ [made with God’s help], mainly found on 15th century art-objects, appears on a horn dating from c1570 in the Dresden Historical Museum, as follows: ‘GOT IST MEIN HELFER VS ZV DRESDEN MACHT’ [God is my Helper made by VS (Valentin Springer) in Dresden]. As may often be observed on medieval church-bells, here the inscription encircles the rim of the bell while the gaps between the words are filled with decorative elements. This is a type of inscription that was probably predominant with trumpets and trombones until around 1600, becoming less common later on and finally disappearing early in the 19th century. A further relatively ancient style of signing, found in the same museum on three demilune horns by R. Crétien (first half 17th century), consists of the punched master’s sign (a stag with the initials R and C) and also the locality ‘VERNON’ stamped in the right angle just before the bell rim. Outside Nürnberg the fully written-out maker’s or workshop name came predominantly into use already in the 17th century, with makers’ initials being added to the name even on into the 19th and 20th century, eg ‘AS’ with Adolphe Sax, ‘AG’ with Auguste Guichard, and incorporated into a trade name, eg ‘J.T.L.’ with Jérome Thibouville-Lamy.

Apart from these types of inscription, many trumpet-makers of the 17th—20th centuries signed with only their name and workplace, while others added a town emblem, which was originally intended to indicate the locality, later serving also as a workshop-sign. As examples we have the so-called ‘Baselstab’ (bishop’s staff) in Basel (J. Steiger), the bishop’s mitre in Ellwangen (A. Buchschwinder, B. Fürst), the Brandenburg eagle in Potsdam (A.F. Krause) and the electoral swords of Saxony in Dresden (Werner, Leuthold). These latter signs were at the same time emblems of monarchy. We will see later that this kind of sign was also common in woodwind making. Others used individual motifs for their workshop-sign and trade mark, such as a tuning fork (Lecomte in Paris) and an arrow (M.C.R. Andorff in Markneukirchen). The signature was sometimes engraved, sometimes stamped on. In Nürnberg engraving was the rule, undertaken either by a ‘Graveur’ (who was also known as a ‘Trompeten- und Posaunenstecher’) or by the maker himself. According to a document of 1719, J.W. Haas engraved his trumpets himself, but had the coat of arms applied by a ‘Graveur’.[5]

In woodwind making the signing of instruments developed somewhat differently, since on the whole it was less common in woodworking trades for the guild to insist that the master sign. This is understandable, since the quality of wood and of workmanship can be more easily judged by the purchaser than it can be in the case of metalwork. Nonetheless most surviving 16th-century instruments are signed, albeit mostly with monogram and/or workshop-sign, as then used by paper-makers, printers, pewterers etc. From the late Middle Ages in Italy, artisans’ and dealers’ marks usually had a cross set above the monogram,[6] rather in the style of the ‘A’ marks on the set of rauschpfeifes in the Praha museum (CR-Praha: 484E-488E) — although this mark might be a ‘broken’ ‘A’ of the Schnitzers. In Nürnberg it was the rule to use only one or two large capital letters, eg ‘H’ (Hartmann, Herbst) or ‘HF’ (Hieronymus Franciscus Kynseker).[7] As an intermediate stage to the full spelling-out of the name, which already occasionally occurred in the 16th century (eg C. Rafi, B . Vasel), occasionally other types of abbreviation were used, eg ‘IA. NE’ = ?Jacopo Neni, ‘MTZ’ = Martinez, ‘MANFRE’ = Manfredo Settala, or — a later example from the 18th century — ‘I.C. Hartw’ = J .C. Hartwig. The fully written-out maker’s name finally became the rule in the last quarter of the 17th century. The name can occasionally appear as an addition to the traditional monogram, eg in the case of Denner with ‘ D ’ or ‘ID’, of Sattler, C . Schlegel and Schell with ‘S’, of Zick with ‘Z’. Monograms are only seldom met with in the 18th century, but were occasionally used in the 19th and 20th century (eg ‘I.G.T.’ = J .G. Tromlitz, ‘AL’= A. Liddle, ‘GHS’ = G.H. Hüller in Schöneck). From a paleographic point of view, the earliest woodwind marks are in a Gothic-style typeface (eg Valiani) that went out of use around 1510. From C. Rafi onwards (first half 16th century) the letters are usually cut in ‘antiqua’ capitals of a style in use from the second half of the 15th century. As was the case with pewter, the mark was printed sometimes in high-relief (on a depressed ground), sometimes in bas-relief. The first style, printing in high-relief (Rafi, Vits, Settala), ceased to be used from about the mid 17th century.[8] Influenced by the Baroque perception of forms, makers’ names from between about 1670 to 1750 often tended to be enframed in a scroll (cartello), whose antecedents go back to the 16th century. In the same spirit we find at the same period, especially in Nürnberg, the initials transformed into a decorative monogram of intertwined design [‘Schlingemnonogramm’] in addition to, or as a substitute for the signature (Gahn, Denner, Staub).

From about the 14th century many cities required that any trade product made within their walls should bear evidence of its origin, in order to make the wares better known outside and easier to re-order. Thus for example in 1354 the cities of Hamburg, Lübeck, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald and Stettin required metal-workers to apply the town emblem in addition to a workshop-sign.[9] However this requirement to show the locality was followed less on the whole by the wood-working trades than the metal-working trades; thus in the 16th and 17th centuries we still find many woodwind instruments that bear neither town emblem nor written-out place of origin. To this category belong those instruments with the trefoil or ‘rabbit foot’ mark which, since these are never found in combination with initial-letters, must represent an early style of signing. These may either be workshop-signs whose single, double or triple recurrence may signify a ‘breaking’ (see below), or else be a collective or ‘free sign’ of several workshops or of a turners’ guild. For example, from 1368 all Passau cutlers marked their blades with a wolf, from 1407 the paper-mills of Ravensburg used as their watermark the head of an ox, the Nürnberg bell-makers marked their bells with a star until the 16th century, when they changed over to individual masters’ signs. It should also be remarked here that in many trades the sign of the master, or of the inspectorate for indicating quality, was applied once, twice, or even refused altogether, eg as with sculptors in Antwerp or, still in the 17th century, in the case of pewterers in Braunschweig-Lüneburg.[10] For a 19th century example, see under Schuster & Co.

In Nürnberg, where woodwind-making was carried on under the auspices of both the hunt-lure and bone-turners [‘Wildruf- and Horndreher’] and the wood-turners, signing was compulsory; according to the 1667 statutes of the former, ‘every master is to have his own mark, and to mark his own work with it, the said marks are also to be entered into a special book’.[11] Unfortunately this book of marks has not been preserved. Only a few of the instrument-makers in either guild used pictorial devices (Jacob Denner, I.G. Zick, I.A. Löhner etc), the others restricting themselves to their name, with or without monogram. Outside Nürnberg and in other European countries similar customs were prevalent; it may be noted that in the case of Italian guilds, the regulations and trade policies described above in connection with Nürnberg evolved earlier on the whole, while being similar to them.

After manufacturing had grown increasingly important in the course of the 18th century, general laws were passed that went beyond these guild statutes, which demanded that products be signed. Thus according to a Palatine-Bavarian ordinance of 1768: ‘conceming individual artists and craftsmen in this country, these same, and indeed every master, is responsible for the marking of wares made by himself with a personal and easily recognizable mark.’[12]

The choice of sign was free both in art and trade, but here both brass and woodwind-makers made wherever possible a play on the meaning of their name. Thus Appelberg chose an apple, Jacob Denner a ‘Tannenbaum’ [fir tree], the Crone family a ‘Krone’ [crown], Eichentopf a ‘Topf’ [pot] with ‘Eicheln’ [acorns], the Hainlein family a ‘Hahn’ [cock], the Haas family a ‘Hase’ [hare]. Originally the sign, as well as the monogram, represented the name of the maker, wholesaler or dealer. Among the pictorial signs used as an addition to the name, both town-crests and state-emblems were very important also for woodwind-makers from the 17th century onwards. Among these were the fleur-de-lis for Paris (Hotteterre, Bizey, Prudent, Amlingue), the lion for Lyon (Rafi), the crowned double eagle for Nijmegen (Wyne), the ‘N’ for Nürnberg (Engelhard), the ‘W’ for Wratislawia (Breslau) (Weigel, possibly also meant as monogram of his name), the six-spoked wheel for Erfurt (Kruspe), the lion of Brunswick for Göttingen (J.B. Eisenbrandt), the Brandenburg eagle for Potsdam (Kirst, Freyer, Martin, Dölling), the Netherlands lion for Amsterdam (Boekhout, Borkens, Terton), the unicorn as emblem of British royalty for several London workshops (Astor, Gerock, H. Wrede), the Hessian lion for the Scherer family of Butzbach, the crossed swords as state emblem of Saxony and Dresden inspection-mark (Grenser, Grundmann). Among the various members of the Sattler family, we find used the hallmark of the Saxon goldsmiths (swords in a crowned shield), the heraldic beast of Leipzig (lion rampant) and the crown.

This practice of adopting the emblem of a city or of a sovereign authority — originally at the behest of towns and intended, on the part of the craftsmen and artists, for self-advertisement — arose with the object of obtaining protection should the mark be illegally used.[13] Where instrument-making was not guild-organized and no register of marks kept (tablet or book) and thus no legal protection offered, the stamping with such signs offered the prospect that the authority in question might lend support to which the craftsman, by having acquired citizens’ rights, had some claim. Although in Nürnberg legal protection was in fact good, thanks to the quasi-guild system in force, from early times master-craftsmen there were allowed to sign with the local town-crest as well as their name. Thus a trombone in the Leipzig museum (D-Leipzig: 1914) bears the following four stamps: [a] the maker’s mark ‘MACHT HANS HAINLEIN MDCXXXI NVR’, [b] the master’s mark (crowing cock, with the monogram ‘HH’), [c] the Nürnberg city crest and [d] the hallmark of the trumpet-guild commission (miniature town crest with ‘N’). The attitude almost of trust that a town might show to its masters went so far in some places as to allow pewterers to hallmark themselves, and in Zürich and Genève this was so even in the case of goldsmiths. Where a town crest appears in conjunction with a monogram that is unknown, this type of sign will in some cases allow a cautious guess to be made as to the place of manufacture. Thus the pine cone which appears together with the monogram ‘FH’ on a flute in the Nürnberg museum (D-Nürnberg: MIR 280), stands for Augsburg.

Where an emblem of state authority came to be adopted, originally there may have been an appointment as ‘Court instrument-maker’ behind it. The text of the patent of such appointments contained, at least in the case of Prussia (eg with Freyer, Kirst, Krause) a general passage in which the sovereign guaranteed his protection to the instrument maker. According to a Prussian Cabinet order dated 16 October 1831,[14] and leading cases tried in 1853 and 1867 in Berlin before the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, the use of the ruling sovereign’s coat of arms by the Court instrument maker was permitted for certain purposes, although not without certain restrictions. He was, for example, forbidden to use the coat of arms for his personal seal. Things were less strict regarding such lesser symbols of state authority as crown and heraldic beast. Originally it would only have been appropriate for those masters (or principally those) holding a Court appointment to use these as mark; later, however, other reputable workshops simply followed suit. This process may be observed with the swords of Saxony. Augustin Grenser, before being appointed Court instrument maker in 1753, appears to have used a fleur-de-lis as his sign; however following his appointment, he changed to swords and crown; from 1763, when Saxony had to give up the Polish throne, he progressively (or principally) signed with swords only. Towards the end of the 18th century some makers without Court appointment changed to the sword mark because of the high reputation of the Grenser and Grundmann workshops, eg J .G. Otto in Markneukirchen and Hamich in Dresden. After Saxony became a kingdom in 1806, Heinrich Grenser gave up the swords in favour of the royal crown, while many other workshops in Saxony (Bormann, Liebel, Finke, Heinze, Uhlrich etc) followed suit. While after 1806 woodwind makers in the kingdoms of Bavaria and Württemberg were happy to use the crown, many instruments from Prussia showed the eagle of Brandenburg (Prussia) and many from Austria and Bohemia the Hapsburg double eagle. Symbols of state of this kind, whose constant use in the German states was also a sign of nationalistic awareness, did not play a comparable role in France and England. Since the symbols of city and of state authority are often similar or identical, drawing conclusions as to possible Court-appointment status is only possible in certain cases. Since in the 16th century the ‘Court instrument maker’ in its later sense did not yet exist, the Habsburg Imperial eagle found on instruments by ‘HIER. S’ — and it is this, according to information from the Berlin heraldic society ‘Der Herold’, that we are dealing with here — may be presumed to be the emblem of a German city bearing this eagle in its coat of arms.

As well as using signs symbolizing their name, or emblems of city or state, woodwind makers would often use arbitrarily chosen signs. These include the gloriole of the sun (‘sunburst’), used by a number of Parisian workshops (Godfroy ainé, D. Noblet, Hérouard frères), a flying angel with trumpets used by several makers in Strasbourg (Bühner & Keller, J .M. Bürger, Dobner, Roth), or the lyre, one of the most common of 19th-century signs (Berlingozzi, Thibouville-Lamy, E. Piering, C. Golde etc). Apart from name, pictorial sign, and monogram, stars also came to be included regularly in the signature. These may originally have been the ‘free signs’ of certain turners’ guilds (which thus every member might use); in other cases they may have signified quality, by analogy with pewterers who used in the 16th to 18th century a flower (rose) as quality-mark. In the 18th and 19th centuries they came to be used primarily as signs indicating that sets of instruments or of joints belonged together. However in many cases it is no longer possible to determine their precise meaning.

After this general survey, let us now examine the commercial-law practices concerning the maker’s mark. We may reckon in general that the mark functioned both as a guarantee of quality for the purchaser and as an advertisement for the maker. In Nürnberg the master’s mark was hereditary. Entitled to inherit was the widow, who could continue to use it unaltered, and the youngest son — but not the eldest, which is bome out by evidence not only from the instrument-makers but from other trades in Nürnberg as well.[15] According to this rule, the workshop of J .C. Denner would have passed first to his widow and subsequently to Johann David Denner, although so far no documents have been found to confirm this. However it must have been so, since two of the instruments supplied by Jacob Denner to Göttweig in 1720 are stamped ‘I.C. Denner’ and it is known that in 1754 the firm of ‘I.C. Denner’ was selling Clarinets.[16] We may recognize from this that Johann David Denner continued to use his father’s mark without ‘breaking’ (and without the addition of ‘I.D.’), and thus that instruments bearing the ‘I.C. Denner’ mark are (in spite of Nickel’s assertion to the contrary) datable up to the period around 1760.[17] As is well known, the elder son Jacob Denner conducted his own flourishing business using the sign of a fir tree. If a business had a great reputation, it might well happen that it would be continued under this famous name. In this way the ‘J.W. Haas’ mark was retained for over three generations, albeit with ‘broken’ versions of the master’s sign. In the event of there being no heir, the mark reverted to the ‘Rugamt’ [an office for the supervision of trade matters] and might then be purchased by the next master on the waiting list; the purchase price might vary, according to how successful its former owner might have been (about 3-9 gulden), as shown by Ilgenfritz. Otherwise it was assumed on the taking over of a workshop. According to a decree of 1640, trumpet-makers in Nürnberg had to remain with their mark once selected although, as has been shown by Ilgenfritz, changes were permitted in other trades. The treatment in other towns and countries of the workshop mark of ‘free’ masters does not appear to have been strictly regulated.

It was a widespread custom that the master’s mark should not be carried over in identical form by the workshop successor, but ‘broken’, ie modified in some way; the marks of the Haas and Hainlein families in Nürnberg are typical examples of this. A special form of such ‘breaking’ [‘Brechung’] was the twofold or threefold stamping of the same sign, as in the case of the ‘A’ and ‘AA’ Schnitzer monograms, as well as clearly the rabbit foot mark. In the case of Jobst Schnitzer, he added a budding twig to the crown that he inherited. At all events, the ‘break’ needed to be clearly distinguishable and recognizable. Above all it was a basic requirement in every trade that masters’ signs should be clearly and unmistakeably distinguishable from each other. During the course of its existence a particularly large workshop might often employ several brand-marking punches, either consecutively or at the same time. The stamps might differ from time to time in size and detail, as in the case of J. C . Denner,[18] and of A. Grenser, who initially spelled his name Grentzer.

The right to sign belonged solely to the proprietor of the workshop or factory, to the wholesaler, even likewise to the merchant, but never to the journeyman. Only where instrument-making was guild-regulated was the workshop-proprietor a master in the strict sense, having produced a required masterpiece to order; otherwise up until the first half of the 19th century he was classed as a ‘free artist’ or ‘mechanical artist’. In Nürnberg the wholesaler had to be a master in the particular trade in which he was active, but would possess greater financial resources, which for example he might need to deploy for the maintainance of his piece-workers. According to several Nürnberg trade ordinances of the 16th century and to one of 1629, a piece-worker who was originally a master or a ‘free artist’, and later even an unmarried journeyman,[19] had the right to apply his mark before the wholesaler or master signed the product. Not long afterwards, however, piece-workers lost entirely this right to sign to the wholesaler or master for whom they were working. Various cases of over-stamping (eg on an oboe d’amore by Hirschstein in the Leipzig museum) can be explained thus. Also the letters ‘B’, ‘D’, ‘E’, ‘G’, ‘ O ’ and ‘ T ’ or ‘Y’(?), which appear over the stamp on some Scherer instruments and which, according to Phillip Young, cannot refer to the names of members of the family,[20] were probably the marks of piece-workers or of sub-contracted workshops. If this supposition is correct, any letter appearing either under or over a name could mean the following: [a] the monogram of the maker, retained according to ancient tradition (eg ‘S’ in the case of Sattler), [b] the sign of a town (eg ‘N’ in the case of Engelhard) or [c] the sign of a piece-worker. Apart from these it might also be a ‘broken’ sign (presumably ‘ID’ under the ‘I.C. Denner’ mark), as well as perhaps the initial of the forename (‘T’ over several of the Stanesby stamps), or an indication of pitch.

Where instrument-making was not regulated by guild, it repeatedly happened in the 17th/18th century that the master was forced, at a time when commissions were hard to come by, to work temporarily as a piece-worker; even in Nürnberg, when a workshop had a commission that was too large for it to handle on its own, other masters might help out. In cases such as these, the wares would receive the stamp of the master to whom the commission had come. This practice, also referred to in article seven of the Nürnberg trumpet-makers’ ordinance of 1625, was confirmed as late as 1786 in a ruling by the ‘Rugamt’ on behalf of the bell-makers, under the terms of which sub-contracted masters were not allowed to sign, but only the main party commissioned.[21] From this it is possible to understand a situation whereby Anton Schnitzer the elder, Sebastian Hainlein the younger, J.W. Haas and other masters might have signed some of their instruments with ‘fecit’ or ‘macht’ (also ‘machts’ or its abbreviation ‘M’), while other instruments of theirs did not bear this sign of authorship. Of the approximately 200 Nürnberg metal instruments that survive, this is the case with about 27 percent, which might thus have been made in other workshops. It is possible that among these might also have been some less successful ones from the master’s own workshop, which he would have signed with his initials only. From the provisions of article seven it does not follow that mediocre wares might ever have been foisted upon a customer under the name of a good master, for the latter would have been in a position to improve any instrument supplied to him before putting his own name on it.[22]

A similar state of affairs held good with the Nürnberg woodwind makers. A decree enacted in 1624 on behalf of the turners ruled that it was no longer permitted for wares offered by turners from outside to be bought by masters for resale; such wares might only be had from those of their colleagues who had few or no orders.[23] A similar decree of 19 November 1699 relating to the hunt-lure and bone-turners forbade them to supply their wares to merchants. It was ruled instead that masters of lesser competence [‘unvermögliche’, of inferior ability, means], might supply their wares only to masters of greater competence [‘vermögliche’, of superior ability, means], who then had to trade them themselves, in order by this means to put a stop to poor quality [‘Stümpelei’, botching] and profiteering on the part of the dealers.[24] In practice this meant that those masters who could only produce poor or mediocre-quality instruments had to sell them for a modest price to a ‘competent’ master.

These Nürnberg practices, the product of an ambitious civic trade-policy, are not necessarily applicable to other cities or indeed countries, although they may have served as a model. Certainly it would hardly be reasonable to suggest that a 17th or 18th-century trumpet made in Lübeck, Basel or London etc without ‘fecit’ (or some word like it) in the signature might not be an original piece of work. What the local traditions were in individual cases still requires clarification. It may be remarked that the word ‘fecit’ was hardly ever used on woodwind instruments; when it was, the maker was vouching that it was genuine and of his own manufacture.

The Nuremberg trade regulations and historical sources are often not specific enough to make the life and work of individual makers understood, for example, that of the Denners. Nickel and Kirnbauer claimed that Johann Christoph Denner (1655-1707) was allowed to sign his instruments only from 1697 on when he became master of the hunt-lure and bone-turner guild.[25] Prior to that time, starting in 1678, he would have worked as a piece worker for other masters who marked his instruments with their stamp. There are, however, three facts that suggest a different interpretation of his work. First, an unusually high number of instruments have survived with Denner’s marks —about 80—, many more than those of the other Nuremberg makers of his time. They are 8 (H. F. Kinsecker), 7 (J. Schell), 1 (N. Staub), 12 (J. B. Gahn), 3 (J. B. Zick), 0 (C. Zick), 0 (W. Meisenbach), 29 (J. W. Oberlender. This relatively high number probably resulted from the fact that he continued Jacob Denner’s business.) Second, many instruments with the I. C. Denner stamps differ markedly in style and structure. Third, Denner had become prosperous which allowed him to own three houses toward the end of his life (in 1693 he still had only one). It further allowed him to pay for a very expensive funeral for his wife in 1702 (with all eight clergymen of the Lorenz church in their vestments walking in front of a French hearse) and to inherit 2775 Gulden to his daughter Katharina Christina, a sum which had the purchase power of about two houses.[26]

These three facts suggest that Denner conducted a business which in German lands was called Verlag and its head Verleger. A Verleger was an entrepreneur or free artist with greater financial means than a common craftsman and conducted kind of cottage industry, but may also have worked as wholesaler. As Verleger, Denner would order the instruments from piece workers, possibly advancing material and some money, but not necessarily so. Upon delivery, Denner would examine the instruments, fine-tune them (if necessary), then stamp and sell them. It is a business model that already the Neuschels and Anton Schnitzer conducted in the 16^th century in Nuremberg or much later Johann August Crone (1727-1804) in Leipzig.[27] The merchant capital which is necessary to start such a business apparently became available to Denner as dowry when he married the daughter of a gold spinner in 1680, a craftsman who produced the gold threads for embroiderers. Denner’s Verlag business left him enough time to pursue his creative aspirations which came to fruition in the invention of the clarinet and the new designs of chalumeau and racket. When Denner was appointed master of the hunt-lure and bone turner guild in 1697 out of band, he was allowed to carry the master title which entrepreneurs and free artists were not allowed to do. His entire career extended over a period of 27 years, from 1680 to 1707.

After 1707, his son Jacob continued the inherited business. He was appointed Stadtpfeifer (town musician) in 1706 and principal Stadtpfeifer in 1727, but he also was master of the hunt-lure and bone-turners guild. About 44 instruments with his stamps have survived which are stylistically and structurally diverse like those of his father. While traditional wisdom attributes the diversity of the instruments of both Denners to their ingenuity and creativity who would have made all instruments single-handedly in their workshops, the submitted hypothesis attributes the diversity to the work habits and the use of different models of the various supply workshops. It is up to organology to systematize and attribute the surviving instruments and the various stamps and additional marks to the different supply workshops.

In Leipzig it was customary even for well-established workshops, when business was thin, to work for other firms. Thus in 1775 P. L . Lehnhold was working for Crone, for whom EW. Sattler was also active in 1788. It is therefore hardly surprising that surviving instruments bearing the ‘Crone’ mark differ from each other in style. The boundary between own manufacture and trading and wholesaling activities was vague, so that it was not unnatural for J .H. Eichentopf and M. Hirschstein to sell violins under their name and label.

The wholesaler system grew in importance in the 18th century, especially from the end of the century when economic liberalism started to become predominant in Europe. In addition to actual wholesalers, who were sometimes practising musicians as well who signed their instruments as if they were manufacturers (eg 0. Oehler), there were also instrument-makers who ran a wholesale business in conjunction with their workshop (eg Griesling & Schlott, J .W. Weisse). The mark began to change in the 19th and 20th centuries as many firms, usually the larger ones, began to be run as companies, which naturally came to be reflected in their title. Thus they came to be called for example ‘Maino & Orsi’, ‘Pélisson frères & Cie.’, ‘Henry Keat & Sons’, ‘Schreiber Comet Manufacturing Co .’ The precise wording of the title would be legally established and, from about the middle of the 19th century, entered officially into a register of companies. If a famous firm came to be sold, the old mark would often continue to be used (see Couesnon, Gautrot). A new proprietor might capitalize on the reputation of the acquired firm by adding it to theirs for their trade name (eg ‘E. Paulus vormals Lemcke’), or continuing to use the older name (eg ‘Ch. Roth /J.M. Bürger Succ.’). What might be compared to the 16th-18th century ‘breaking’ of the master’s sign was to make an addition to the name at a change of generation, or to distinguish it from other firms in the same family, of ‘father’ (eg ‘Savary père’), ‘the elder’ (eg ‘Godfroy aîné’) or ‘junior’ (eg ‘August Reichel jr.’). Successful family workshops would often retain their name unaltered over several generations (eg ‘C.W. Moritz’). As with ‘fecit’ in older times, in the 19th and 20th centuries terms such as ‘maker’, ‘Fabrik’, ‘Meister’ appear in the mark to show that the instrument really had been made by the firm in question.

The fact that it was possible for many workshops to produce good instruments and to sell them in considerable numbers for good prices induced imitators and counterfeiters to stamp second-rate wares of their own with the mark of a good workshop. The legal protection operating in Nürnberg, where the copious ‘Briefbücher’ in the municipal archives there (which have as yet scarcely been examined with regard to musical instruments) very often reported on the imitating of masters’ signs,[28] did not in principle extend beyond the boundaries of the city; only if a workshop possessed a privilege granted by ruler or Emperor would the protection cover this entire area. Imperially privileged marks of this kind, which would testify to deliveries made to the Imperial Court and to the special favour of the Emperor, were granted from about 1485 to Arsazius Schnitzer and his kindred with the marks ‘A’ and ‘AA’, together with the Neuschels with the crown, and from 1568 to Anton Schnitzer and his descendants. We happen to know about these privileges because of appeals lodged by the owners in 1551, 1555 and 1619 to the Emperor in Wien regarding the counterfeiting of their marks.[29] In severe cases the punishment for this was a heavy fine and the confiscation of the instruments. The privileged mark was hereditary, a fact alluded to by Andreas Schnitzer in his petition of 1619, but had to be re-applied for in the event of a change of ruler. Counterfeiting the mark of a master or workshop probably counted everywhere as an illegal and punishable offence, which in time was entered into the criminal-law books. In France a Royal decree of 15 April 1564 even treated and punished the imitator of trade marks like a forger of currency, an edict that until 1824 was often re-drafted and renewed.

As signing with a name became more common in the 16th and 17th centuries — earlier in trumpet-making, later in woodwind-making — so the conferring of privilege by means of a pictorial sign diminished in importance, together with the protection that this brought. In those places where instrument-making was under guild auspices but signs were unregistered, there was hardly any effective legal protection. This would more likely have been afforded by town crest or emblem of sovereignty. For these reasons, and through the increasing activity of wholesalers and dealers entitled by ancient privilege to use such signs or trade marks, the emblem came to be very freely used in the 18th century, often for reasons of marketing strategy. Thus the fleur-de-lis, used by some of the most important Parisian woodwind makers, was imitated by Scherer (Butzbach) and Heitz (Berlin); as P.T. Young and M.H. Schmid have convincingly argued, this was in order to place their instruments more favourably on the market.[30] It was probably for a similar reason that Stanesby junior occasionally used the dolphin, which Rippert used as a workshop sign. For similar reasons it was the place of manufacture itself, rather than the town crest or workshop-sign, that was falsified; for example there are waldhorns from the Markneukirchen workshop of the brass instrument maker J .G. Liebel (1752-1822) which are signed ‘M J.G. LIEBEL A WIEN’ (‘M’ : ‘machts’, made by), and a clarinet by the Leipzig maker C.C. Werner is signed ‘C.C. WERNER / WIEN’. Such instruments would have been intended for a market where people had not heard of the master, but knew that the best horns and clarinets were made in Wien.

From the end of the 18th century, the legal uncertainty with regard to the mark became greater as the number of manufacturing workshops increased, whose proprietors often tended to view trade mark protection as a matter merely for the craft-guilds. As a result of this, laws were passed in various countries that forbade the use of foreign (ie improper) trade names and marks. Among these were the Prussian Allgemeine Landrecht (II, 20, 1451) of 1794, and the Strafgesetzbuch for the Kingdom of Bavaria (München 1813, volume 3, pp 263/4) which cited as offender any who labelled their goods with signs or signatures other than their own. None of these admonishments and regulations was to have any lasting success. Thus in 1791 Johann Georg Tromlitz complained in the Musikalische Korrespondenz der teutschen Filarmonischen Gesellschaft für das Jahr 1791 (Speier 1791), p 263: ‘I should also not neglect to mention that there are persons who put my name, namely the initials J.G.T. which I always put under the Eb and D# keys, on their own misbegotten products to sell as work of mine.’ He therefore recommends that those interested should only buy from him personally. A similar state of affairs led Wolfgang Küss to publish in the Wiener Zeitung of 19 August 1821 a ‘Warning’, after he had discovered his name on instruments not of his make. If a number of instruments from the same workshop survive, it should be possible to distinguish the genuine from the spurious, as in the case of D-Markneukirchen: 125, a bassoon with an unusual form of the ‘H. GRENSER / DRESDEN’ mark and also built in an uncharacteristic style. That forgery was no less prevalent in England as it was in Germany is shown by Thomas Lindsay, a connoisseur of the London scene, who wrote in 1828 of such misdemeanours:[31]

. . . these sort of gentry often go a step further, and having no reputation of their own, they make free to borrow that of various respectable and established makers, by stamping their name upon the trash vamped up in the manner we have described, and so doubly impose upon the unwary. In this way, the names of Messrs. CLEMENTI & Co., Messrs. MONZANI & Co., Mr. NICHOLSON, and Mr. POTTER, have been successively used by the unprincipled and designing, sometimes either omitting, adding, or altering a single letter in the orthography of the name, so as to evade the operation of the Law, in the event of the fraud being detected. Indeed, to such an extent have these nefarious practices been carried on, with reference to the last mentioned individual, that they must of necessity have subjected him to much mortification and loss: there is scarcely in town a shop window of the description alluded to, which has not an abundance of “POTTER’s Flutes” exposed for sale, not one in six of which are legitimate, but known amongst the Flute-making trade by the unequivocal denomination of Bastard Potters. The same system has been followed in regard to Mr DROUET’s manufacture, & the comparatively inconsiderable number of Flutes, which his short sojourn in this country enabled him to finish, has, even on a modest computation, been thus surreptitiously increased five-fold, for notwithstanding all the “fine-toned Flutes by Drouet”, which are ticketed up in every street, scarcely a genuine DROUET is now to be met with.

As was the practice also in the pianoforte-making trade among others, many tried to circumvent copyright by slightly modifying the name, as was probably the case with flutes marked ‘POTTAR / PATENT / LONDON’ or ‘BANEBRIGS / LONDON’ instead of ‘BAINBRIDGE / LONDON’. A parallel case from Wien is ‘KIES / WIEN’ instead of ‘KÜSS / WIEN’, or from Paris the mark ‘TALARI’, which probably stands for ‘HALARI’. In order to guard against the circulation of counterfeit flutes, the London firm of makers Rudall & Rose issued a certificate of authenticity with their instruments. On an example datable to 1824-37 this read:[32]

Rudall & Rose, having discovered that Flutes are offered for Sale bearing their names & address, which have not been made by them, are determined to guard the Public against such imposition, by not sending out in future any Flute from their Manufactory, without This Notice affixed to the top of the Case. George Rudall (signed), John. M. Rose (signed)

Returning to the state of affairs in Germany, let us first of all look at the practices of the dealers. A well-to-do dealer would buy his instruments from a lesser-known maker unsigned, and then put his own stamp on them, eg C.A. Klemm in Leipzig. A dealer’s mark often cannot be distinguished from that of a maker; this has to be deduced from other sources. One example may suffice: the mark ‘C. LIPS / GOTHA’ on a trombone at D-Gotha. According to the Gotha town directories of 1841-52, Conrad Lips was a tax-official, tradesman and musician, and from other evidence we may presume that he ordered the instrument from the Vogtland unsigned, or even more likely already supplied with his mark on it. The ancient merchant custom whereby the dealer put his name next to that of the maker was only occasionally followed in the 19th century.[33] Among these who did so were the dealers Brizzi & Nicolai of Firenze, who from 1844 stamped clarinets by Stengel with their mark (D-Leipzig: 1464), and G.B. Cerutti & Figli of Torino, who ordered trombones from Bruno Klemm Jr. in Markneukirchen. In this case, however, the Markneukirchen firm itself was a dealer/wholesaler business, which is a fact not evident from the mark itself (D-Frankfurt/O: 247). The actual makers, whom one would have to look for among the many small craft-workshops in Vogtland, remained anonymous. Flutes and Clarinets from the late 18th/first half 19th century marked ‘DRESDEN’, which survive in considerable numbers, also come from various workshops in Saxony; they are marked ‘Dresden’, because good instruments were known to come from there. In Vogtland, where around 1860 some 50 percent of their total musical instrument production was exported to the United States, the numerous small workshops were dependent, because of the depressed state of trade, on local and foreign wholesalers. Berthold and Fürstenau reported in 1876:[34]

Thus for example, the superior models of woodwind instruments made in Markneukirchen are bought for the American and Russian market by foreign firms, who then sell them under their own labels for at least double the price.

Writing on the shape of brass-instrument bells in his Illustrierten Haupt-Catalog über Musik-Instrumente of 1895, the Markneukirchen wholesaler Paul Stark addressed overseas dealers thus: ‘for Importers, the name of their firm can also be stamped on’. By keeping the Vogtland masters anonymous, the wholesalers prevented players and retailers in the US, for example, from contacting them direct, therby strengthening their dependence on them. It would also often happen, as Louis Bein reported in 1884, that French makers’ names were put on their wind instruments, in order to be able to sell them more easily.[35] Because of this, in order to defend themselves against the misuse of their trade marks in Germany, some French firms entered their marks on the German trade-mark register, being thus able to prosecute counterfeiters at law; these included Lecomte & Cie., P. Goumas (Buffet-Crampon & Cie.) and Gautrot by 1875, and Jérome Thibouville-Lamy in 1888. On the other hand in 1895 Evette & Schaeffer apparently came to an arrangement with the Markneukirchen wholesaler Paul Stark whereby the latter licensed Vogtland makers to build their models and stamp them with the ‘Buffet’ mark. In addition to foreign models and stamps, those of famous German firms were also imitated. In 1882 the Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau (3.9, p 102) reported the following: ‘Since in recent times many counterfeit Meyer-flutes have come on to the market, flooding importing countries such as America, Australia etc, the attention of interested parties should be drawn to the mark on genuine instruments’. While according to this correspondent the genuine inscription read ‘H.F. MEYER. / HANNOVER’, that of the counterfeits read ‘MEYER. / HANOVER’, in both cases with crown. Judging by the spelling of the place-name, the counterfeiter of the mark presumably came from an English-speaking country. At least counterfeit Meyer flutes were known about on the North American market, since the 1908 Musical Merchandise Catalogue of the Rudolph Wurlitzer Co. in Cincinnati was offering ‘Genuine H.F. Meyer. Hanover’ flutes. The same correspondent went on: ‘There are other imitations on offer as well, but these latter seem to be the most deceptively made and the most widely distributed.’ On this evidence, those flutes that are only stamped ‘H.F. MEYER’ and crown, but bear no locality, would appear to be non-genuine (eg D-Leipzig: 4076). The Markneukirchen firm of wholesalers F.T. Merz offered in their 1915 Hauptkatalog über Musikinstrumente a model of the Meyer flute with the mark ‘NACH / H.F. MEYER / HANOVER’ (with only a single ‘n’), of which examples still survive, but it must remain doubtful whether ‘Nach’ [after] was always actually retained in the trade.

From the 19th century, the large-scale counterfeiters were less the small-scale makers, but rather the large wholesale and trading houses who distributed the majority of wind instruments made for example in the Vogtland. According to the Presidential Report of the Plauen Chamber of Trade and Commerce for 1899-1900, the 13 largest trade-houses in Markneukirchen and Klingenthal (A. Bauer junior, C . Heberlein junior, P. Herrnsdorf, W. Herwig, B . Klemm junior, W.H. Otto, E . Paulus, C . A . Schuster, Gebrüder Schuster, C.F. Doerfel Steinfelser & Co., C . G . Herold, O. Liebmann & Co. and C.W. Meisel senior) had had a turnover that year of 32 559 wind and percussion instruments. The firm of Schuster Brothers, founded in 1854, which owned a factory for stringed instruments and dealt in all types of musical instruments, marked their better quality brass instruments (‘Concert’, ‘Armee’, ‘Symphonie’) with the label ‘MUSIK-INSTR-FABRIK GEBRÜDER SCHUSTER MARKNEUKIRCHEN’, while leaving unmarked the medium and lower quality ranges. Only in the case of a patent or protected trade-name did the wholesaler or dealer have to take this into consideration. It was solely for this reason that the wholesale firm of C.A. Wunderlich, who normally marked all their instruments with their own name or their trade-mark ‘Cea’, marked their Boehm-flutes with Schreiber’s Gis mechanism with ‘BRUNO SCHREIBER / C.A. WUNDERLICH’. The small producer who worked for wholesalers and dealers normally possessed neither registered trade mark nor protected patent, thus having, compared with these, no legal right to sign his own products. It was a different matter for makers who turned out quality instruments that were in demand from artists. These were occasionally included in dealers’ catalogues; often, however, they were able to avoid collaboration with these and organized the distribution of their instruments themselves.

By the mid-century the misappropriation of marks, which the simple threats of punishment contained in the code of trade law were unable to prevent, called for ever more severe penalties (eg the Polizeistrafgesetz [police penal law] of Hannover in 1847, the Prussian penal law of 1851, the Saxon penal law of 1855) and to the introduction of trade-mark registers. France led with her trade-mark protection law of 23 June 1856, which required that the trade marks, whose validity lasted 15 years, had to be deposited in the bureau of commerce of the town in question. The maximum penalty for contravention was a fine of 3000 francs and three years imprisonment (article 7). The first Parisian wind-instrument makers to avail themselves of this legislation were Lecomte in 1860 and Auguste Courtois ainé.[36] The adding of ‘marque deposée’ to the signature drew attention to this legal protection. Regarding the introduction of trade-mark registers, Austria followed with a trade-mark protection law of 7 December 1858, whereby they were to be kept by the competent chambers of trade and commerce; while Bavaria followed in 1862, in Great Britain an Act to amend the law relating to the fraudulent Marking of Merchandise of 7 August 1862 did not make provision for the registration of trade marks. In Germany the trade-mark protection act of 30 November 1874 allowed for trade marks to be registered that remained valid until annulled by their registrant. Use of the registered trade mark was only permitted to the registrant, who in normal cases was a manufacturer, wholesaler or merchant.[37] Thus only in certain cases would the mark and signature on an instrument indicate the identity of the actual maker. By comparison with the registered French marks, which had to consist of a pictorial motif and the name, in Germany a certain degree of variety was tolerated. Here are a few examples: C.G. Schuster in Markneukirchen (1892): eight-pointed star with lyre in the middle; Theodor Stark in Markneukirchen (1891): crowned lyre with triangle; Otto Mônnig in Leipzig (valid 1907-17): bird on branch. From 1894 individual words were also recognized as trade-marks, eg 1903 ‘Signal’ with an arrow for Pfretzschner & Martin, vormals M.C.R. Andorff, in Markneukirchen; 1907 ‘Sonor’ for the firm Jhs. Link in Weissenfels (fifes etc); 1911 ‘Orthoton’ for Otto Mönnig in Leipzig; 1928 ‘Sonora’ for the firm Oscar Adler & Co. in Markneukirchen, who from 1903 used as trade-mark a pair of crossed Clarinets, and from 1909 a perching eagle in a sunburst, in each case with ‘O.A. & Co.’

Although manufacturers were always concerned with the protection of their rights and insisted that an instrument might only bear the name of its maker — as is usual with paintings — they were not always successful in these demands. According to the anonymous article ‘The importance of a form of protection for the firm and trade-mark’ in Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau of 1928 (49.4, pp 162, 173), the market had demonstrated that it was of secondary importance whether the mark on an instrument was that of a dealer or of a maker. It thus followed that it was hardly possible for the principle of artistic property rights to apply in the case of craft and industry products. In spite of all legal protection measures, it has not proved possible in our century to prevent ‘trade-mark piracy’ in every branch of trade; on the contrary, it would appear to have increased in recent decades.[38]

Although at the time there was an obligation, or at least a basic tendency, to sign, we find a number of instruments from the 18th and 19th centuries that are anonymous, including some that are of the very highest quality. We may distinguish three main reasons for this:

• The quality not being up to standard, signing would have been a bad advertisement for the maker.
• Although only a guild or ‘free master’ was allowed to practise in trade during the period before the ‘freeing up of trade’ [‘Gewerbefreiheit’], there were nonetheless those that worked illegally, so-called ‘botchers’ [‘Pfuscher’]. Had such persons signed, they would have given themselves away, and thereby become liable to punishment and to a possible ban.
• Instruments ordered by a head of state or other high-ranking individual remained unsigned for reasons of delicacy (Quantz). Submissiveness of this kind was appropriate to the age of absolutism.

Apart from the signs and inscriptions constituting the mark which have been considered so far, there are others sometimes to be found on instruments. As an extension of the mark’s function as advertisement, many firms, especially in France and England, added their precise address, so as to enable orders to be made direct to the workshop. Many would give their Court instrument-maker title and give details of awards conferred at trade exhibitions. There also often appear references to patents granted and to registered designs, which often employ the following abbreviations:

The first law for the protection of an invention came into effect in 1474 in Venice as an isolated example, followed in 1623 by the ‘Statute of Monopolies’ in Great Britain. These were followed by patent laws in 1790 for the USA and in 1791 for France, which later became the model for the rest of Europe (eg 1814 Prussia, 1859 Italy). Before this patent legislation there were individual regulations in the form of privileges granted by the ruler (eg 1700 ‘clavecin brisé’ by J. Marius, 1723 ‘clavecin d’amour’ by G. Silbermann). The earliest wind instrument patent was probably that for the Potter flute, relating to R. Potter’s invention in 1785 of the ‘pewter-plug’. A custom that reflected a special situation in Prussia regarding inventions consisted of marking with the phrase ‘ERFUNDEN UND VERFERTIGT VON ...’ (invented and manufactured by ...) that occurs on instruments by makers such as J.G. Moritz and H.J. Haseneier. Copyright protection extended in theory only for a limited period of time laid down by the patent commission (usually between two and ten years) and throughout the state in question; thus an invention patented in Prussia, for example, could be imitated with impunity in Austria. Once the protected term of the patented invention had run out, some inventors continued to advertise their product by drawing attention to their patent. Thus many French firms added the phrase ‘Bté S.G.D.G.’ in order to indicate that although the patent was no longer protected, it had proved successful. After his valve patent had expired in 1828, Heinrich Stölzel wrote for similar reasons of advertisement in a price-list of his instruments which he had made under licence:[39] ‘From now on, all chromatic instruments made by me will be stamped with my patent-mark, whereby I vouch at the same time for their being genuine.’ This was an attempt on his part to retain links with his clientele.

As well as details of the patent number, there is often to be found the number of the ‘registered design’ [‘Gebrauchsmuster’], which covered models, new stylings and special devices which did not have the character of actual inventions. After there had already been bans in certain branches of trade in the 16th-18th century on the imitation of patterns (especially designs on textiles) and models, nationwide regulations first came into effect in the 19th century: 1806 France, 1842/43 Great Britain and USA, 1858 Austria, 1868 Italy, 1876 Germany. The protection for registered designs was neither automatic nor international, and was only applicable for certain designated appliances, models etc. In the case of musical instruments, they do not appear to have been used until the middle of the 19th century, and thus it was possible to imitate and copy on a wide scale. Nonetheless the ‘Convention for the Protection of Commercial Property’ of 1883 in Paris succeeded in bringing about a more effective protection for intellectual property in the sphere of commerce.

On many instruments numbers or stars are to be found, which indicate to the player that sets of instruments or of joints belong together, as well as the size of ‘corps de rechange’. In the case of the 18th and 19th-century piccolo, terz-flute, clarinet, horn and trumpet, we may also find an indication regarding pitch. If a brass maker supplied a set of four horns that were all to be in tune with each other, he would number them accordingly, since there might need to be fine differences between them not visible to the naked eye. In addition he would indicate the pitch of the entire instrument or of the tuning-crook or shank in question. Comparable indications are found on Clarinets; if there were several barrels and upper joints, these would be numbered accordingly and provided an indication of their pitch. In the case of corresponding pairs of flutes and Clarinets, the first would often have one star (or ‘1’), the second two stars (or ‘2’). The ‘corps de rechange’ of flutes, oboes and bassoons were always numbered according to size, that is ‘1‘, ‘2’, and ‘3’ for the largest, medium and smallest. It can occasionally happen that a sign be used to indicate quality. Thus the Markneukirchen brass-instrument factory Schuster & Co., after adopting a crown as their trade mark in 1885, used the following: 1 crown = good quality, 2 crowns = very good quality, 3 crowns = superior quality. On the other hand the firm Gautrot aîné & Cie. used the following marks: for first quality: ‘GAUTROT-MARQUET / Breveté SGDG / Paris’ with the monogram ‘GM’ above in an oval; for second quality: ‘GAUTROT Breveté / à Paris’ with anchor and ‘GA’ below; either there was no third quality, or else such instruments were unmarked.

The process of manufacture itself sometimes requires that the maker makes use of certain signs, especially when, as often happens, he is making several instruments at once. In order not to mix up the parts of identical instruments, he adds distinguishing marks to the joints, mostly simple slashes. Slashes and nicks are also put on the valves of brass instruments after they have been matched up in order to indicate the exact positioning of the parts. With the numbering of valves there are two main systems of numbering. In Austria and Bohemia they are usually numbered according to engineering practice, ie from first to third valve ‘1.’, ‘1:’ and ‘1’ (the third valve without period); elsewhere valves are numbered consecutively ‘1’, ‘2’ and ‘3’. Finally, there may occasionally be found other inscriptions and indications on instruments, as shown at the beginning of this article.

In conclusion it may be stated that the mark on an instrument — on the assumption that it is genuine — will indicate no more than its provenance from a particular firm that was concerned either with manufacture, wholesaling, dealing, or all of these activities. The question of who has actually built an instrument is shown to be more difficult than has been hitherto realized. The simple equation — name given on the mark equals maker of the instrument from beginning to end, inclusive of the keywork — will only prove to be correct some of the time. If we are to attempt to answer the question as to the number and the identity of the different piece-workers and workshops that might ever have supplied, for example, the Denner and Crone workshops, we must study in detail the style features of every instrument bearing a Denner or Crone signature. It should also be borne in mind that the second half of the 18th-century saw the rise of the factory system, where division of labour was practised. Between 1797 and 1806 the workshops of Kirst, H. Grenser and Griesling & Schlott were already manufacturing establishments employing a workforce of from six to ten. Although the proprietor would have decided on the model, supervised production and fine-tuned each instrument (though not necessarily always), he would not under normal circumstances have built it throughout himself. Production became even less personalized around the middle of the 19th century, following the coming into existence of a supply industry to furnish makers, often from a considerable distance away, with component parts that were standardized to a greater or lesser degree. Since there was no effective copyright or trade mark protection in force until the second half of the 19th century, it was possible to copy the models of others with impunity; this should be borne in mind when attributing unsigned instruments to specific workshops, basing associations on style.