noseflute.org: A Vintage french nose flute in the Netherlands

Jun 18, 2012

A Vintage french nose flute in the Netherlands

Mr. Bernard Visser is the happy curator of the FluitenMuseum in Bolsward, Netherlands. And this incredible museum stands in... a private flat.

« The one and only private flute-museum in the world! », as states Mr. Visser.

And this is not a small collection! Not at all!

« The amount of different flutes is at the moment 1091, and they all can still be played. In other words: I play them all. I only collect flutes you can play a melody on. »

I surely cannot publish all the impressive pictures that Bernard Visser sent, here are just 2, to give you an idea of the plentiness :

Bernard Visser also invented his own model of "fluit" :

« The flutes with the "slide", called "saving-flutes" : you can only find them in Bolsward and nowhere else in the world! It's my own invention: you can save money in it and you can play on it by sliding your finger. So these flutes are not tuned and you can play with every other instrument, depending on where you start with your finger (the same idea as the nose-flute, that is not tuned as well). »

And he adds :

« I am 67 yars old and retired when I was 50 Years old, so I had a lot of time for my hobbies. »

Among all his marvels, flutes, ocarinas, pan flutes... Bernard Visser owns 4 nose flutes. One plastic Humanatone "made in China" which was used as a "business card", 2 old "Swan logo" (we'll come back in a further post on the history of those flutes made in Germany), and a tin nose flute made in france around 1920. (Following pictures by B. Visser)

This metal flute has a shape rather similar to the Humanatone, but shows two particularities. First, it still is coated with its original paint, a kind of military-greenish color, and then, has 5 unusual small flaps that have been folded over the edge of the nose cap, in order to assemble the two tin sheets which compose it. This means a rather different shape design and fabrication, relatively to the Humanatone. Here, the nose cap is "doubled".