Garry Greenwood (born 1943 in Kent, England – 2005) was a leather artist living and working in Melbourne, Australia who made highly ornamented sculptural instruments out of leather. His Leather LightHarp was featured on Oddmusic ¹⁾ as well as his Windform.²⁾

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All of the quoted texts in this section is from Musical Instruments by Garry Greenwood, written by Brian Allison, Ros McMillan, and Garry Greenwood ⁴⁾

“Garry Greenwood's first musical instruments made in leather were inspired by the design of stringed instruments. These non-sounding sculptures embodied aspects of these instruments but were often used in exaggerated and sensuous shapes in colours as diverse as lipstick pink and black.

From these non-sounding pieces the artist's interests turned to creating sculptures that could be played, the first of these being leather drums and stringed instruments. Further research int the qualities of sound chambers led Greenwood to create an instrument titled Suspended harmonic, which is displayed in the exhibition. The sculptor's next experiments were wind instruments, which he reasoned were basically a tube through which air traveled. His first instruments were natural horns, played with a trumpet mouthpiece, the sound consisting of the notes of the harmonic series. There were the forerunner of another series of instruments that Greenwood called Bowhorns, named because of their similarity to the shape of the bow of an arrow, one of which is exhibited.

Interest in creating an instrument with a long slim body led Greenwood to design a bassoon which he titled Serpentine Bassoon because of its sinuous shape and the 'snake head' out of which the horn of the instrument emerges. Its successor the Dragon Bassoon, is displayed in the exhibition and described below.

The artist's most recent set of instruments, known as Mountain Harps incorporate a set of strings that can be plucked or blowed, the largest of these containing 12 strings. It is on display, as its forerunner, titled Little Mountain Harp. Other instruments in the exhibition include leather ocarinas, titled Poco pods, Shwahorns (wind instruments fitted with saxophone mouthpieces), percussion instruments known as Clams and playable masks.

Garry Greenwood's fascination with sound sources and technology has lead him to design extraordinary instruments, combining acoustic resources with stunning visual properties. It is truly unique work.”

“This is fundamentally a bowl within a bowl which is suspended by a guitar string attached to a peg which can be tuned to a note in the bass register. The note has a range of approximately a fifth, around the bottom E of a double bass. The peg is housed in an overarching frame made of aluminium enclosed in leather. The frame is attached on both sides to a base constructed of cowhide and particle board covered with a layer of merinoskin, the latter a surprisingly decorative medium displaying the intricate swirling patterns of the animal skin. The Suspended Harmonic can be bowed (a violin bow seems to produce the greatest range of sound), plucked or strummed. By depressing the arch of the frame the pitch falls, and conversely, when it is raised, the pitch rises. This pitch bend, in conjunction with the way in which the instrument is played, gives a player a huge range of percussive, bowed and plucked sounds. The Suspended Harmonic's bow was made especially for the instrument by Melbourne luthier, Ian Watchorn.”

“A meeting with the expatriate American now Tasmanian, musician, Karlin Love, gave Greenwood the idea for an instrument that could accommodate a mouthpiece using a single reed. This instrument, which is approximately a metre in length, was firstly fitted with a clarinet mouthpiece but Love later found that a tenor saxophone mouthpiece was more satisfactory because of the acoustic power and timbral qualities of the larger mouthpiece. The Bowhorn on display in the exhibition is typical of most of Greenwood's Bowhorns, with a 'string' connected to both ends of the instrument to force it into its characteristic shape, similar to an archer's bow.”

“This instrument is the second in Greenwood's latest series of musical instruments based on the theme of 'mystical creatures'. After the creation of many large-tubed Bowhorns, the sculptor was keen to experiment with a longer, narrower tube, from which resulted his first bassoon. For this, he glued several slim tubes of leather together, creating decorative pieces both to cover the joins in the manner of traditional instrument makers and also to add stability to the instrument when played. One of these decorative pieces is the head of a dragon, its open mouth extruding a leather bell, some 30 cms long. The head has flaring nostrils and flat pointed ears, its body ending in a magnificent scaly tail this is removed when the mouthpiece is attached. A 'leg' complete with clay, holds the mouthpiece against the back of the creatures’s neck for stability.

The mouthpiece can be that of a bassoon of a trumpet. With a bassoon mouthpiece the sound in the lowest register is similar to a trombone, while in the middle register it is a cross between a hoen and a bassoon. In the upper register the Dragon Bassoon can produce a variety of high pitched wails and sighs, and with all holes covered a large range of multiphonics and harmonics can be produced. A trumpet mouthpiece gives more of a barking sound.”

A feature on the Dragon Bassoon on Oddmusic ⁵⁾

“The prototype for this set of instruments was the African mbira, often (wrongly) titled thumb piano. The instrument consisted of a leather bowl enclosing a bridge made of a piece of dowel, the 'keys' consisting of bamboo pieces taken from a place mat, typical of the ever-inventive creator. Although some sounds resulted, Greenood belived that covering the bowl with vellum would make a better sound chamber, however, there were many tension problems and only a dull thud was the result.

Determined to find a variation of the mbira, Greenwood then turned the bowl upside down, threaded a string through the vellum and enclosed it in a cardboard tube, attaching the string to a peg at the top of the tube. His thinking was that when the bamboo 'keys' were played the string might vibrate sympathetically, however, too many of the 'keys' did not produce a good tone. He noticed, however, that if the tension of the string were tightened, some of the previously non-producing 'keys' could produce convincing sounds, thus, he reasoned that if two of three strings were attached, it might be possible for all to sound 'in sympathy'.

The result of this thinking was an instrument known as the Little Mountain harp, on display in the exhibition. With a base of an inverted bowl on four legs, six strings were threaded through a PVC tube covered with leather and tied to wooden pegs (that Greenwood carved) at the top of the tube. It was thought that the instrument would be performed with a player holding it in two hands while plucking the strings, however, the piece was not user-friendly. The tube wobbled and the pegs had no real purchase with the tube. From this prototype, Greenwood learned two things. Firstly the pegs needed to be a better quality because if they were wound too tightly they simply unwound. Secondly, while the PVC provided strength, it was too thin to give the pegs any grip, thus it was decided to use a piece of solid dowel for the next instrument.

For this, Greenwood bough 12 viola pegs which were placed in holes bored into the top of the dowel. The holes were then enlarged with a reamer (a tool with a tapered blade) but during construction there was still a problem with the tension of the strings as well as the pegs. Greenwood completed this instrument, which is on display but he was already working on the technology for his much larger Mountain Harp, also exhibited in Instruments of Desire. With this piece the artist changed to pegs with gears, using 5th string banjo pegs. These were inserted on the side of the harp's neck in two spiral formations to which were attached ten guitar and two banjo strings, all extremely light so as not to put too much tension on the vellum on the base of the instrument.

A major innovation is a 'ruffle' made of brass that Greenwood carved complete with 12 holes for the strings. The ruffle is fitted around the back of the instrument with the holes acting as 'take-off' point for the strings, thus serving the same purpose as a nut on a conventional stringed instrument.

The base of the Mountain Harp is an inverted leather bowl, with four claw-like legs made of aluminium encased in leather. The underneath is covered with vellum that has been soaked and stretched then pulled up around the lower edge of the bowl. This forms a one inch border where Greenwood has taken the opportunity to create an exquisite piece ofartistry. The border is secured with two rows of wooden shoemaker's nails, while black wax thread is tightly bound between the nails further securing the vellum against the bowl. The whole work is an astonishing piece of visual art. It is also a musical instrument with the ability to produce a huge range of sounds depending, as with most of Greenwood's pieces, on whether the instrument is blowed of plucked, played as a percussion instrument or, indeed, used in whatever manner an enterprising musician might devise. ”

“Another invention of Greenwood's are the leather ocarina, named 'Poco pods'. The sculptor was interested to discover the difference between the traditional ceramic ocarina and one made from leather and he also wanted to discover the acoustic principle of the ocarina's characteristic 'whistle'.

These little instruments proved to be one of the most difficult projects Greenwood had undertaken with problems including the size of the finger holes, a lack of consistency in sound – in the prototype there seemed to be no relation between sound and finger – and controlling the tone. The last problem was caused by the large volume of air inside the pod which Greenwood found was greater then that of a bass recorder.

Greenwood's first instrument was basically flat. (All subsequent Poco pods are sphere-shaped) He used a piece of the body of the instrument but then spent two frustrating days trying to find the right distance between this and the mouth-hole. When he eventually found the right place he discovered that only one hole sounded, thus in subsequent instruments the holes were cut out after the piano key was put in place. ”

See Ocarina

“The Chordwainers play their favorite Tango in Carmel Hall at the Cygnet Folk Festival. January 2009, Cygnet, Tasmania, Australia. The instruments we play were made by the leather sculptor, Garry Greenwood.”

“Founder of the Chordwainers leather instrument ensemble, Karlin works with the Tasmanian Leather Orchestra project of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston. She plays Bowhorns, the Black Rose, Pocopods, Mountain Harp and String Drums. Karlin's work with Garry Greenwood began with a performance for a 1994 exhibition. Following that performance, Garry built the first of the bowhorns which use saxophone mouthpieces. She premiered the new instrument within a recital of Australian clarinet music in the U.S.A. later that year. She has also composed for the instruments, most notably the Leather Concertino, premiered in Melbourne by the University of Tasmania Wind Orchestra and the Chordwainers; and music for the play Jocasta, by Stella Kent. Karlin's articles on the leather instruments have been published in the Australian Clarinet and Saxophone Journal and Sounds Australian.” ⁶⁾

Karlin Love playing the Mountain Harp