RUCKERS.  A harpsichord and virginal building tradition

by Grant O'Brien.

Re-published as a digital reprint  by Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Buy a signed copy with a personal dedication (click here).

Flemish papers for sale (click here)

Full-scale harpsichord, virginal and stand drawings of harpsichords and virginals are available for sale (click here)

Harpsichord-making woods for sale

A small amount of the important woods normally used by harpsichord makers is available for sale from this site.  This wood is all very well-seasoned and of the highest quality available.

The types of wood include accurately-quartered North-Italian spruce soundboard wood.  This soundboard wood is sold only in flitches of about 6 to 15 planks.  Each flitch is a succession of slices from the same tree, and these can be used (as most Flemish and French makers did) to make a soundboard that is perfectly uniform in colour and texture because it is all of exactly the same wood, all from the same tree - for the whole of the soundboard.

Also available is a small amount of knot-free Italian cypress from Tuscany (cipresso netto) and some genuine African ebony (Diospyros crassiflora). 

All of this wood was bought as air-dried, and is now more than 45 years old.

For further details of quantities and prices please see the woods section of this site.