Display organ pipes made to your specification in our workshop

Display pipes by Shires on the Tickell organ in the Church of St Mary-le-Bow, London.
Shires has the skill and experience to make display pipes to your specification, such as those on the left created for the organ in St Mary-le-Bow, London.

We can also design the mouths according to your wishes, whether it be for the upper or lower lips. On this site you will see some of our display pipes featuring Roman, diamond or bayleaf patterns. Front pipes can be fitted with hooks or they can be provided for later attachment.
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We can make removable panels on pipes for voicing, and languids on bass notes are ​always strengthened with a brass bar down to eight foot F. Zinc liners are fitted in the feet of the bass notes to prevent sagging. ​On 16ft pipes, we solder a zinc sleeve on the inside of the body to strengthen it and guarantee that the pipe will never collapse. We also pay attention to alloys of tin – mainly copper – to help strengthen display pipes.

​ It is sometimes thought that the more tin there is in the alloy, the stronger the pipe will be, but this is not the case. An alloy containing 70 per cent tin is very weak, so careful consideration is taken at all times to the prevention of collapse.

The picture at the page top, by Nick Moore, is of the inside of a display pipe.
A decorative organ pipe made by our craftsmen in Leeds.
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Above: Terry Shires with a diamond pattern display pipe. And, right, lips worthy of Marilyn Monroe.

Creating organ pipes that shine like diamonds

A decorative pipe is marked out on plain metal in the Shires Organ Pipe workshop in Leeds.
A member of our team carefully marks out and then scores the pattern on a display pipe, left and above, in our workshop. The finished pipe, in an intricate diamond design, the result of hours of precise, highly skilled work, may be seen below.

Gently does it: a demonstration of how to open a mouth on a display pipe

How is the mouth of a display organ pipe created? Here's our colleague Terry Doyle in the workshop making a highly skilled job look effortless on a pipe of 80 per cent tin.

A birthday jest for voicer, Guy

The handsome display pipe on the right, with two eyes, a nose and a mouth, is known as a Jester and was made in our Leeds workshop.

​It was commissioned for Guy Russell, right, the tonal director at Nicholsons Organs of Malvern, by his wife as a gift for his 65th birthday.

The team at Shires Organ Pipes was delighted to be involved in this special project for our good friend, Guy.