…ah..it’s great to have people in the know on the list!
And which Coyne made Ennis’ set?
tommykleen
James Ennis Snr bought a bag of sticks in a pawn shop and had the set rebuilt by a Dublin maker. Brogan or Mulcrone, I forget which one at the moment.
The original set had an extra double bass regulator. That and other design features would suspect that the set was made by Maurice Coyne.
Tommy
Would agree that Ennis set very most likely Maurice - some doubt on closer inspection about Nollaig’s set.
As Sam reminded us in an earlier reply, there is a lot of speculation going on here, and it’s worth keeping this firmly in mind.
Seán Donnelly’s article for the Seán Reid Society Journal “A Century of Pipemaking 1770-1870: new light on the Kennas and the Coynes” is the authoritative publication on the pipemaking families of the late 18th and 19th centuries. (Fortunately it is availble online now!)
John William Coyne certainly made flutes but it is not even certain that he made pipes. (There’s a set in the National Museum of Ireland which is suspected to be a John William, and it does have a number of features that distinguish it from other Coyne sets.) Maurice Coyne made pipes, and advertised himself as a maker of “Union and Scotch Bagpipes”. Later, a “John Coyne” advertised himself using the same wording - chronology seems to rule out this being the same as “John William” Coyne.
If JW did make pipes, it’s thought (based on surviving flutes, I believe) that his stamp differed from Maurice’s. The usual reckoning - which is of course based on inference - is that the sets marked “COYNE” and “COYNE DUBLIN” with the usual arc-shaped lettering were by Maurice. However it seems that Maurice did not always stamp his work when executed in ebony - or more likely, the stamps did not “take” very well on ebony. There is no firm footing at the moment for assessing which sets, if any, were actually made by John Coyne.
The work associated with Maurice is very, very consistent on the inside, so there’s a pretty good basis for identifying his work on the basis of precise bore measurement. However if the later John Coyne used the same reamers, it might still be difficult to tell the difference. Peoples’ styles, and fashions, do change over time, and the outside appearance of work confidently attributed to Maurice does vary, particularly in the details of mounts. The usual assumption has been that the mount shapes of the deluxe sets got simpler over time, but I don’t know of any firm basis for this belief. The mounts on the more ‘basic’ sets (i.e. 3/4 sets and sets executed in boxwood or fruitwood) are often simpler than on the ebony 3-regulator sets but this may have been a matter of “standard” versus “deluxe” ornamentation.
It appears that Coyne had a number of imitators, and probably several of these were contemporary. The key and mount patters which we nowadays associate with Coyne (and to some extent, Kenna) were in fact in commonplace use on other instruments, so sets that “look” like Coyne superficially may just be following a fashion of the time. I have in my workshop at the moment a set that “looks” very Coyne on the outside - more so that the set on offer in this thread - but the inside tells a different story - and the bores are not oversize, so it appears that the difference cannot be due to aftermarket re-boring.
I think the NPU set (the one Nollaig has had) is Maurice, BTW, and my best guess, for what it’s worth, is that all of the well-known Coyne sets being played are Maurice’s.
It was Brogan who restored the Ennis set, and Mulchrone who made reeds for it in Seamus Ennis’ middle years (until Mulchrone died).
Bill
Excellent post Bill! Thanks for that.
Its unsafe to disregard a set of pipes that would seem to be made by a certain pipemaker on the internal dimensions, as this assumes that the pipemaker never experimented with different bores.
Highly experienced art historians can tell if a painting is by a certain painter by the way the paint has been applied to the canvas.I think its possible that if you see enough of a certain pipemakers work you would see certain idiosyncrasies unique to that maker . There is also more chance (as we have sadly seen too often) that pipes are altered internally than externally and for that reason it would be more reliable to extensively study a pipemakers brush strokes as it were.
RORY
I seem to remember Bil saying this set isn’t actually stamped with anything; that might be my remembrance from correspondence with him; at any rate a close up pic of any stamps should be provided if indeed it does have any such markings. Lack of them doesn’t subtract much from the price, sets from the golden era of pipemaking are quite rara avis.
Some parts of the restoration don’t look like Geoff’s work either, the Lynch-esque drone switch or the Stephenson-esque chanter top. If it winds up in my hands I’d redo those - have the chanter holes properly repaired too.
A sound sample of the drones and regulators should be provided too, just to hear what they sound like, even if they’re not in tune at the moment; the ad claims the “Set’s fully going.,” after all.
That’s interesting about the Coynes and ebony, Bill; has someone really gazed hard at the Ennis set with a loupe? O’Flynn said the thing isn’t stamped at all, but I’ve heard a few stories about pipers not realizing what they were looking at, even with sets they’d owned for 20 years+.
Rory old chap… gi yer heed a rest…when ye know its time to bow oot then do so wi some grace. 
Bill has extensively studied the Coyne phenomena and I would consider him an expert in this particular field.
Yer reference to the Art world, whilst romantic in a sort of naive way, is really a bit misleading, or as I would prefer to say, but decency and respect fer ye prevents me..“a load o bollax.”
Artists have their imitators too and have fooled experts in the past.
Back to this set. Whit Bill says is more than good enough fer me. It is reasoned fact.
I would say his liitle finger probably knows more aboot Coyne than your entire…(put in here whitever ye like 
)
Love and Peace to the World etc etc.. 
Uilliam
All this discussion of which Coyne made these pipes is all very nice (and probably unanswerable until Bill measures the bores) but surely the most identifiable part of these pipes are the regs. i.e. made without ( I presume) the Cnat and A keys. How many other sets are there in existence with this feature and who are the makers?
For what it’s worth, I’d say the windcap was Coyne - certainly not Stephenson ( although we could ask the man himself 
)
But then again, I’m no expert - But that’s never stopped other people!
Jon
Well after consulting my Uilliam to English dictionary I’ve finally worked out what you are trying to say , so thanks for your kind suggestion and concern ,but its OK, I like using my head, you should try it yourself sometime.
Its great to hear that your happy to let someone else do your thinking for you ,but I never give a hundred per cent credence to the so called “expert” as you said yourself ,even the experts make mistakes.
I’m not doubting Bill’s knowledge of Coyne’s work ,but identifying the maker of pipes is not an exact science and is a lot of the time based informed guess work
I’m sure different people have different analytic procedures but these procedures have to be based on some sensible criteria, or else you end up with the kind of theory that was put forward here awhile ago when someone had found a reed that kind of played well in copies of some Coyne chanters of various pitches,and then suggested that Coyne must have been designing his bores around one reed. That’s all very well,but then you get someone like groundskeeper Uillie who is not used to thinking for himself and takes this suggestion as fact ,who then tells his students this “fact” and so the virus takes hold.
As I said before to discount a set that shows every outward sign of being a Coyne as not being a Coyne solely on the bore not being typical is not safe.
RORY
Ignoring all the grumpiness, it’s true, this is an inexact science. However doing the above is a heck of a lot safer than judging something to be Coyne on the basis of a rough, superficial resemblance - which people do all the time!
The bores of the instrument I refer to are so different from Maurice Coyne’s that it could only be Coyne if it were made with an entirely different set of reamers. However it looks superficially like “classic Maurice Coyne”. This is not what one would expect if it were, say, an early example of Maurice’s work; nor is it what you would get if it were a Maurice Coyne that had been mucked about by a later tamperer (e.g. the bores would be oversize). It is however what one would expect if it were, for instance, a contemporary copy. There are of course other explanations and in the absence of documentation one can only hazard an (educated) guess.
(I have seen a “Kenna set” that appeared to my eye to be entirely composed of replacement parts, save one piece of the tenor drone and the chanter, both of which had been chopped and re-bored. Is it still a Kenna set? But that’s another topic… see “Davy Crockett’s Axe”)
There are enough lookalike/“almost” sets that have been misattributed that I think there can be no reasonable doubt that copyists and “unknown” makers were common during the classic period. It’s a bit like fragments of the True Cross and saints’ fingers, when you add them all up you end up with too many!
Bill
Kenna, R Reid, various other early makers. 13 keys became the industry standard at some point.
Notice that the Egan ‘Ferguson’ set has 15 keys on the bass+middle+tenor.
The extras seem to be two higher keys on the middle and tenor - b and c sharp?
For what it’s worth, I’d say the windcap was Coyne - certainly not Stephenson ( although we could ask the man himself >
I mean the wooden part, with the swelling in the middle - that’s a characteristic of Davy’s or Peter Hunter’s work. Windcaps by just about everyone else in history are parallel or close to parallel tubes of wood/metal. Maybe it’s original, it’s just one of various questions I have.
I really don’t think the drone switch is original, though.
Whats so inconceivable about Coyne using a different set of reamers ,would it not be odd if he never used a different set of reamers ?
Would the best and most reliable identification not be based on all aspects of a set and then the “expert” could make a balanced guess ?
As usual with topics like this one ,it raises more question than it answers. If there was makers at the time of Coyne making copies of his pipes how did they remain unknown ?
If they had the skill to copy Coyne why did they not make pipes to their own merit?
Would Coyne been aware of these makers as Sam L and Davy Stephenson is to Peter Hunter or Andy Faden or Gordon Galloway is to Cillian O;Brien.
Will,in a hundred or a hundred and fifty years time the names of the afore named understudies be lost under the shadow of their mentors as it was with Coyne’s ?
RORY
Peter doesn’t make bulbous anything,. That’s a Davy design.
Right you are, Peter’s windcaps are expanding tapers. Forgot who was who, there.
Rory doesnae give up does he
Never mind maybe he should go to…
comparethecoin.com
or comparethecoyne.com
Thanks Uilliam,thats the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.
RORY
Wouldn’t it have been a lot of work to make new reamers (in effect developing a new bore design)? Tools were passed down between makers.
The Seán Donnelly article that Bill references does mention a couple of such canidates, e.g. Colgan.
Rory I have been exquisitely nice to ye in the past… 
and will continue to do so ,(the lordy willing).peace and lerv to ye all 