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Intersesting key work. I wonder how it plays? Seems like all those keys would get in the way. One piece body, looks more like a Pratten.
Isn’t that the radcliffe system?
Actually, I think it is more of Beohm’s early conical ring key design. Terry may have more info on this.
Here is a link to Rick Wilson’s site for more information on these strange flutes.
http://www.oldflutes.com/boehm.htm#con
Nice!
If there’s anybody with an interest in an early, conical bore Boehm flute, well, this looks like a really nice one, and they don’t come up like this all too often.
Kind of like a keyless flute with braces on! 
I think the ring keys would be very cumbersome to play. I didn’t like the feel of the ring keys on the Sicama flute I restored.
I think the German word is die Brille, meaning eyeglasses. Actually, there are more modern clarinets with keys like that, too.
To my limited experience, they do feel somewhat unusual to use, but while having fairly light action.
Perhaps a bit. Yes, it is the system that Boehm came up with after the trip to London in 1831 where he encountered the almighty Nicholson. He realised he could never approach Nicholson’s impact while Boehm played on the small-holed 8-key flute he was used to. But he must have been appalled at the tuning anomalies that were present in Nicholson’s flute. So he went back to first principles, put the holes where they should be and came up with a mechanism to deal with the inconvenient truth that there are 12 notes to the octave and we have but 10 digits.
Boehm invented the ring-key in 1832, but it wasn’t manufactured in England until Rudall & Rose took it up in 1843. There was the famous argument in the Musical Times about who actually introduced it - Clinton and Card seemed to come out of that well, Carte seems to have not.
But it never proved popular in England. Tuning was great, but the power was way down, due to a narrow bore, compared to a Nicholsonian flute. The fingering was also a problem, as was the complexity. The fingering is the same as the modern cylindrical Boehm.
Rockstro and modern writers sling off at Siccama, but the flute he designed, which later morphed into the Pratten’s Perfected, sold 4 times as many as the RR version of Boehm’s 1832.
Rockstro and modern writers also sling off at Clinton, but he went on to design and make conical multikeyed flutes with fabulous performance.
But Boehm has to be admired as the man who lead the way - showed them all that tuning can be good. But it wasn’t until he came back in 1847 with the cylindrical that he was able to get the power up to Nicholsonian standards.
Boehm’s first cylindricals used exactly the same ring key design that we see on those Rudall & Rose conicals. This kept the hole size down which limited performance. He and RR then went to slightly larger covered holes. But it appears to have been Clinton who realised that much bigger holes were needed, came up with a flute with graduated large holes and took out a prize at the 1862 Great Exhibition. Yet, up to now he’s been ridiculed, because of Rockstro and Carte.
Did Rockstro rubbish Boehm, Clinton and Siccama because they were not English (German, Irish and Dutch), or just because they were smarter than he was? Will we ever know?
Terry
Yep, that’s right. Sliding is not a typical technique but not too difficult even with the rings. A keyless flute feels somewhat naked, if you played a ringed clarinet for a while 
Yes, it’s a beauty, and provided it’s properly taken care of, it’s also an investment which simply will not lose value, nice flute!