The random assortment of stuff for turning. The holes for the tailgut were drilled with the finger drills and widened with the micro-files. Saying no will not stop you from seeing Etsy ads or impact Etsy's own personalisation technologies, but it may make the ads you see less relevant or more repetitive. Set Up. Interestingly enough, Michael King used hardwoods for the soundboard (for example, using maple rather than spruce), so I thought I'd give it a try and see how it sounded. Final image - down the lyre in natural light - just thought this shot looked neat, and looks like the original photograph I first saw of the Sutton Hoo lyre. It comes from Cue Components. The copal is fairly brittle, meaning that if you hack it to readily it chips and cracks. Original Price AU$205.11" Student Model Lyre These are great first lyres, minimal maintenance and easy tuning with zither key. All the pieces are now together and ready for the final finishing and stringing. The entire length is then sawn through and the body frame is now tapered to roughly the right shape. The most popular form of entertainment was music and storytelling. The blocks are then quick roughed with a curved plane rasp to remove some of the stock before putting them on the lathe. I do label them to keep track of which is which. It's considerably faster than sawing though the thicker wood with the coping saw. The triangular frame-harp came into use much later in the Anglo-Saxon period. Unfortunately, it faded from favor after the harp gained popularity in the 9th and 10th centuries. The instrument was tuned G a b c d e (the c here being middle c); for those that care the sounding length is about 51cm, and the strings range in diameter from 1.46mm to 0.66mm. This seals and protects the wood, but uses only historical materials for doing so. The pattern is pretty much a slightly scaled down version of the one I used for my Sutton Hoo lyre. I was surprised that the dremel bits didn't "melt" it like the heavier saw action did, but for whatever reason it worked rather cleanly. It's a nice piece of American black walnut acquired from a hardwood dealer off of eBay. I installed this one on the instrument, and indeed it did create a richer sound than than maple, though not quite as bright as the lighter, thinner bridge. Also visible here is the blow-through hole. The top and bottom cutting across grain is difficult, so I'm going to leave that cleanup until after I've thinned the top part of the block. This is the rough cut body block. There were many stories of ancient heroes such as the tale of 'Beowulf' or the Norse Sagas. King, had starting producing a CD including more detailed historical plans, so I adapted one of his plans for my purpose and started to work! on the Vespasian Psalter illustration. The large block of walnut that will form the frame of the body. Side view showing the pencilled line of what needs to be removed from the sidewalls. When whacking at the particularly hard and curly maple with the chisel and mallet, it is particularly loud, and tends to be sufficiently reverberent on the floor to potentially annoy our neighbors. The text on the back was done with sepia ink (simulating aged willow bark ink) in an A/S text style, though in modern English. The solution was to have a leather strap that was attached to the the back of the arms which one slipped the hand through, thus bracing the instrument while still allowing the fingers free movement. Space has been left at the top and bottom for the holes to insert the strings. It worked particularly well to clamp this. The two other pieces were a lucky find. In looking for more amber, I made a discovery. FREE delivery. The strings are nylgut (rather than natural gut) per the preference of the individual that wante dthe instrument Nylgut looks pretty close to natural gut and sounds (for plucked instruments at least) almost identically to natural gut. Next we do the cut out. I mark along the entire edge (inner and outer) the line I'm following (the "shaded" area is to be removed). Hermes made the lyre from a tortoise shell, and used it to steel cattle from Apollo. It soon became apparent this was not a … 6 Strings Anglo Saxon Lyre, Variously known as a Lyre, Cithara, rotte, hearpe etc. You can see the inner mortise joint visible on the inner edges of the arms. After them we can know this instrument from the legends of the bards, who became an iconic idols of the lonely, wandering musicians of the age of tales. The Saxon Lyre: History, Construction, and Playing Techniques by Dofinn-Hallr Morrisson and Þóra Sharptooth. The tailpiece sketched onto the ivory. In working on another project (specifically the tailpiece for citole number four), I encountered some annoying problems trying to get some inlay to work. The top photo here was taken with flash (I'm still experimenting with the new camera), and is a pretty true color reproduction of the block "in the white," while the bottom image is without flash, but showing more of the grain. To hit the notes of the tuning you've selected, a beginner will probably want to use an online tuner, or … For example, the chunk of amber from which this bridge was carved was copal amber, which comes from South America, primarily Columbia, and is very young by amber standards. The large "tabs" at the bottom will be the tails of the mortise joint. It is an ancient harp design typically called a lyre-- akin to the Greek and Roman instrument of the same name -- strung with anywhere from five to eight strings. The simplest method here is to drill a bunch of 1/2 thick holes through the block and then use a saber saw (lower right) to saw between the holes. The instrument itself consists of a long flat board of hardwood, an inch or two thick, which has a large hole cut out of the upper half (though sometimes this was made in a couple of pieces - see below). The lyre was also popular amongst the Anglo Saxons & Southern Germanic Tribes in the Dark Ages. The Anglo Saxon Lyre is derived from the ancient Lyres of the Middle-East and North Africa and probably travelled with the migrating peoples who spread into the north of Europe and Scandinavia many thousands of years ago. With the back in place, the front is carefully measured and laid out so that it cleanly matches the positioning of the back. We do this with marketing and advertising partners (who may have their own information they’ve collected). The poem is 10th century Saxon, the accompaniment is my own “tune”. It doesn't really fully qualify as amber, as it is only a couple thousand years old, characterized by a slightly crackly surface created from the shrinkage of the material as it dries and polymerizes. Pegs - the pegs were turned and then shaped into tapered square heads. A thin board is then glued to the top and further secured by small nails all around the edges. So I decided to poke around, this time on eBay, for another piece of amber to use as a new bridge, with intentions to carve this one a little heavier. I wanted to taper this instrument lengthwise, so it was thinner at the peg end and thicker at the base. In the latter playing technique, you can get C, Dm, Em, G simply, their open varieties, and a number of aug 4s and 2s. The soundboard is also made of solid ash, obtained from the same table of the body. This process is then repeated for the front. The last bit will be to create the "accessories" - I've carved a small horn pick from some Scottish cattle horn, and now need to make the back strap for the instrument. And now the last part - stringing her up. Originally I had intended to use the bone guitar pegs as the basis for the pegs, with intent to recut them into the square headed pegs appropriate to this instrument. Gluing the soundboard on the body frame. Anglo Saxon lyre, maple wood in antique brown finish Thelyreshop 5 out of 5 stars (115) $ 1,361.62. AU$184.60, AU$205.11 This is a slightly smaller lyre being made for somebody else. There are 43 saxon lyre for sale on Etsy, and they cost AU$394.50 on average. What little we have of ancient Nordic music oddly emphasized thirds (at a time when everybody else was more interested in fourths, fifths, and seconds), and this instrument plays thirds very well, in either style. My later lyres are based on the lyre excavated in Trossingen in 2002, the only complete instrument still known to exist. You guessed it: brown. The piece is still strong, so I don't think it will need a backing to hold the (relatively low) string tension. Unfortunately, after two days of tuning up the gut (gut takes a while to fully stretch out, and takes several days of re-tuning back up to pitch before it settles), the bridge snapped in half at one of the string grooves (yes, at the string I was tuning at the time). The last part of the body block is to add the shoulder braces. A lot of the bulk removal of the material at the tail and the upper curve was done with the dremel, as carving cross grain there was dulling my tools horribly, and was moving extremely slowly. I plugged the hole for the moment, but may need to do a cleaner insert. The large piece of ivory will be used for the tailpiece, and is scrap from the rosette of citole #4. Body After many, many hours of hand sanding, the body block has been "glassed" - meaning that it's been sanded such that all the scratches that can be removed, have been, and the surface is as smooth as, well, glass. The pen blanks are about six inches long for scale purposes. Muzikkon Anglo Saxon Lyre Harp Rosewood • Mid 7th century, after the Prittlewell Lyre • Rosewood Body • Solid Sprucewood Soundboard • Tuning Pegs and bridge made from Rosewood • Stringed with nylon strings • 6 Stringed, Same design as found in a burial site. Unfortunately, it faded from favor after the harp gained popularity in the 9th and 10th centuries. The soundboard is now down to about 3/16th. I was familiar with amber being different colors (clear, green, yellow, or even red), but did not realize that amber from different parts of the world are pretty much different stones. The body block has not been fully cleaned up - the side walls and floor thinned out as much as they are going to be, and everthing basically smoothed down (not polished, but generally sanded). As stated earlier, this was a partial experiment in materials science, and I learn something new every time. Thinning down the soundboard, done mostly with my rasp/planer. I'll be cutting all the fitting from this piece (it's about 10x12 inches). The first part was to cut out a rectangular solid chunk about the size of the bridge. The top piece is the soundboard wood (about 1/2 inch thick at this point), and the bottom piece is the body block wood (about 1 and 3/4 inches thick). The body is finished with a combination of beeswax and mineral oil. Using my normal technique, I drill many holes in with a 1/2 inch drillbit to quicken the process of wood removal. It soon became apparent this was … Those are cut from the piece and roughed out. The holes were then drilled into the arm of the lyre, and tapered there using the peg reamer. The joint I modelled this after is based on the Prittlewell reconstruction. The Anglo-Saxon instrument was first found in Trossingen Germany; little is known about this perticular instrument. First step was to place all the pegs into position and drill holes in them at proper height with the finger drills (you can see the little finger drill still in the last peg). The large chunk of amber I acquired from a Baltic amber store in Mystic, CT. Great! Its dated on VIII century. I had expectations of a bright, banjo-like sound, and instead I got a warm rich tone, which was quite pleasent. Mostly this second technique might have been used to accompany the recitation of poetry or song. So I put the instrument on these pillows to cushion the sound a little. So I got some curly maple guitar body back/side wood from Euro Tonewood, actually via eBay, and went from there. Kind of like the citole, I decided I wanted to make a pretty instrument for myself, and wanted to experiment with using some exotic materials. I'm not willing to thin this one down much more for fear of it breaking, but will still keep my eye out for an appropriately sized piece of Baltic if one ever presents itself. It sounded different than I was expecting. The Saxon Lyre: History, Construction, and Playing Techniques by Dofinn-Hallr Morrisson and Þóra Sharptooth. Each peg has to be individually matched to it's hole to make sure they are all even in depth. I did determine that it could be polished to glass after having been roughed, so wasn't worried about that. At the same time it was the instrument of the Bards, and in the right hands the virtuoso could do magical things with it. A closeup of the metal piece. Searchng around eBay, I was able to find both a nice large piece of copal amber (for $26), and a surprisingly large (4x4x3 inch) chunk of baltic amber for very cheap as well ($39), so I acquired them both, and will make slightly more heavily constructed bridges out of both of them to see what the relative difference in sound is. The joints were mortised into place. They are very small - only about one inch tall and maybe one and a half inches wide. The commonest type of stringed instrument to have survived is the lyre (O.E. I don't do metal-work, having NO space to do that in my house, so I wasn't sure what I was going to do to about the shoulder metal mounts. Set where you live, what language you speak and the currency you use. The body and cross-bar being put together. My later lyres are based on the lyre excavated in Trossingen in 2002, the only complete instrument still known to exist. It is an ancient harp design typically called a lyre-- akin to the Greek and Roman instrument of the same name -- strung with anywhere from five to eight strings. This is a scrap piece of the nice flamed maple from another project. The body will end up about 8 inches wide, and will be assembled from two pieces (the body and the top arm) cut from the same block. The four marks on the end of the sticks are from the engine block part of the lathe. It is a flat, oblong or … The strings are natural gut, acquired from my very reliable source Gamut Strings. The mini-chisels were used to create a clean edge at the top. You've already signed up for some newsletters, but you haven't confirmed your address. TRAGEDY! Anglo-Saxon Lyre Step 1: Step One: Trace and Cut Basic Outline. The lower half is hollowed out to form a sound cavity. There are no sound holes on this instrument. With the basic holes drilled, each is then reamed with the peg reamer, the peg cut to angle with the peg shaver, and each peg matched up to its hole so that they sit at an even depth. Took several hours. Overall it came out quite well, and was a successful experiment in this type of construction. The stems of each of the pegs were tapered using the violin/viola peg shaver, and they have been cleaned up and sanded smooth. It does, however, mean that some of the energy of each blow is lost to the slight give of the pillows as a support. The "decorative" portion of the tailpiece has been completed, and the piece roughly cut out of its block. The outer walls will remain between 3/16 and 1/4 inch thick, as they have to be able to receive the small nails that traditionally hold the soundboard in place. Please. These are third party technologies used for things like interest based Etsy ads. Known variously as a lyre, cithara, rotte, hearpe, etc., it has a couple of forms. Step 3: Cut Out the Upper Arms. I have also made some use of the chapter on the Sutton Hoo lyre in Aspects of anglo-saxon archaeology by Rupert Bruce-Mitford. The lyre is a musical instrument from the string family that dates back to the Ancient Greek world. The Anglo-Saxon lyre was once used to accompany poetry throughout England. These have been found in England at royal burials such as Taplow and Sutton Hoo as well as the less grandoise burials at Bergh Apton, Morning Thorpe and Abingdon. Unfortunately, the antler did not have any sections that were straight and thick enough to create the peg without running into sections that were spongy. Yes! It was a social skill that few of us today can muster, however a thousand years ago it was the expected norm at any gathering what ever it's size. The two are facing each other, and will be mounted at the mortise joint where the body and top arm meet. For those that care about such things, it has been sanded down using hand sandpaper to about 800 grit. Find out more in our Cookies & Similar Technologies Policy. This should be the easiest step. This document is provided as is without any express or implied warranties. A8888d888 8888888b888y8888 8Harmavuskazii, AU$539.52 FREE delivery, Sale Price AU$20.34 The Anglo-Saxon Lyre is a five to seven (mostly six) string instrument used throughout northern Europe during the early middle ages. These are a guitar back pair of walnut from LMII. Next the matching holes were drilled and chiseled out off the body block "stems." One is like a harp, with the left hand supporting the instrument and the right hand plucking the strings. The tabs have been left overlarge at the moment. Send me exclusive offers, unique gift ideas, and personalised tips for shopping and selling on Etsy. Examples of these lyres, include the Anglo Saxon Lyre found during the 1930s at Sutton Hoo in South East England, and the very well preserved Germanic lyre discovered during the excavation of a grave in Trossingen in 2001. All the fittings together in the rough: six pegs, endpeg, tailpiece and bridge. The lyre (Greek: λύρα, lýra) is a string instrument known for its use in Greek classical antiquity and later periods. The finished instrument with all of the strings on. Here are those pieces: The word 'harp' was likely used for any stringed instrument in Anglo-Saxon (hearpe) and Old Norse (harpa), and 'harpa' still carries that meaning in modern Scandinavian languages. The backboard is fitted to the recess, the top lines cleaned up to matche exactly, and the large excess edges trimmed down for gluing. 19.2015 by sharris Taking a short break from the natural-language parser to make a modified Sutton Hoo lyre (based partly on instrucable, possibly from Rutgers ). They like to help when I have wood on the floor, so need distraction. We've sent you an email to confirm your subscription. ♪ Made to order, which takes roughly 7 months This lyre is perfect for travelling due to smaller dimensions. Several were based on the preliminary account of the First, I wanted to see how a constructed body might work- making an open frame and attaching top and bottom rather than hollowing out the board. The squares for the pegs have been lined for spacing. The six pegs cut from the barbells. The body block has started to be hollowed. Lots more sanding and filing cleaned up the joint, and it came out cleaner than I expected. Thankfully it didn't break or even mark the string, which was convenient as the strings themselves are rather expensive. Seeing that there is only one true Trossingen Lyre … These Student lyres are made usually with one piece maple backs (usually seconds with knots or cosmetic flaws but good wood) Stained Forest Green, Dark Brown or black, supplied with Zither Pins and Fluorocarbon string set and a thick red nylon tailpiece for stability in a wide variety of tunings. Did you scroll all this way to get facts about saxon lyre? The lines are for the square pieces from which will be turned the pegs. The top is again without flash, but shows that the soundboard even has a little flame, though nowhere near as pronounced as the block. So all the work on it was done with the jeweler's saw and files. First off, the soundboard was roughly cut out (the dark streaks here are scorch marks from the saw that originally cut the board I think). A slightly angled view of the body block as it stands to this point. The Anglo-Saxon Lyre is a five to seven (mostly six) string instrument used throughout northern Europe during the early middle ages. So far it has held up to several weeks of heavy strumming, so it seems to be stable and strong enough. Few records were left about its construction and playing techniques. The process for the top inner cut-out is repeated for the body cutout, though the walls are left much thinner. The soundboard will be "inlaid" into the body, so it will initially be left a little thicker to allow for any error in the carving down of the body (ie, it might end up thicker at the edges and thinner in the middle if the carved down space on the body is accidentally cut too deep. The block is about 1 3/4 inches thick. It had a number of cracks and inclusions which I had to work around. Peg Turner - the pegs are set up such that it would be difficult (though not impossible) to turn them by hand. The siz holes along the top arc are drilled using a hand power drill. Unlike in the other instuments, I'm assembling both the top and bottom of this one. I had been given as a present this interesting band clamp, which uses a 1.5 inch nylon band on a tensioner to hold irregular shapes together. Much time with plane, files and a bit of dremel and the body frame is pretty much cleaned up. So cutting it is done with a fine-toothed jeweler's saw, slowly. Tailpiece - the tailpiece was completed. The soundbox can be carved different ways. ). The Anglo Saxon Lyre is derived from the ancient Lyres of the Middle-East and North Africa and probably travelled with the migrating peoples who spread into the north of Europe and Scandinavia many thousands of years ago. That was done with a combination of the dremel sanding bits and hand files. Anglo Saxon Lyre. Otherwise all the clamping was done standard style - using handweights! The pegs are cattle bone (very white) violin pegs I acquired from the Taiwanese workshop of luthier Antonio Tsai, who usually sells his stuff through eBay. It is fit into a hole drilled in the end of the bottom of the lyre, where just it's head is exposed. In the meanwhile (as I can only sand for so many hours at a time), finishing out the other fittings. The backboard is glued on, using the pile of spool clamps I have. The poem is vaguely A/S in style, employing the alliterative four beat line with strong cesura, and use of the "kenning" a kind of poetic metaphorical device. I was going to originally just drill holes on either side and peg them together, but I think this is more historically accurate, is stronger, and tests my skills a bit more. The lower nails sit at the point where the feet join the body. I think they look very pretty. First the tabs of the joint on the cross-bar were shaped and cleaned up, as shown here. The octagonal dovetail joint was a pain to do, but came out pretty nicely and was a fun little challenge. The body piece is cut out of the block, and the outer courses sawn off. My initial thought was to use the dremel router to carve it down an even amount, but the very thin walls and not really having something to cleanly brace it on (the table on which I work is slightly warped, and the bottom of the lyre is slightly dished, the combination of which means that it is very hard to clamp it really flat and run a support block next to it to level the router).