Clay-Wood-Winds: Robin Hodgkinson
A flute maker who took measurements in museum collections, fired in raku, and was called the ocarina man on the crafts circuit.
Robin L. Hodgkinson has made wind instruments of clay since the 1970s, from a one-man studio called Clay-Wood-Winds in the village of Haydenville in western Massachusetts, in the foothills of the Berkshires.
Robin Hodgkinson is living and has not been asked about this page. Nothing from his site is reproduced here beyond short quotations; the chronology below is the museum’s own compilation, and every row names where it came from.
He made three things: simple four-hole whistle ocarinas, six-hole transverse flutes, and multichambered instruments of his own design that he called Spirit Vessels — “harmonic sound sculptures”. He tuned them so that beginners could manage them, and sold them to professionals and music teachers as well.
Before clay he worked in bamboo, acrylic tubing, metal tubing and lathe-turned hardwoods, and he wrote about why the material matters: bamboo “subtle and delicate, like an Indian raga”; wood “mellow, like a piece of Baroque music”. He became interested in clay at college, on being shown the whistles and flutes of pre-Columbian Central and South America.
He worked from museum collections
His artist’s statement lists where he went to take measurements from instruments: the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, the Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection at the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology in Mexico City. He has also lived in Central America, East Africa and South East Asia.
Why raku, in his own words
The process page is the best writing on the site:
The Japanese term “raku” connotes spontaneity, intuition, and contentment. I choose to fire my instruments using the Raku style of firing because I admire and enjoy the aesthetic and serendipitous nature of the process. Each fired piece is unique, like improvisational jazz. Starting with a form, or melody line: decorate it, embellish it; expose it to the creative flame; let your knowledge, experience, and intuition guide you. In both Raku and Jazz, the artist must “let go” and trust that the intuitional process will create an acceptable finished piece.
Every ocarina he sold was raku fired earthenware with a white crackle glazed mouthpiece and polychrome lustre glazes — and, he was careful to add, “no potentially dangerous substances are used in any glaze that comes in contact with the player’s mouth.”
The instruments, as he specified them
The ocarinas, all on the four-hole system, hand built and individually voiced. Sopranino and Soprano give a full chromatic octave, thirteen notes; Alto and Tenor give an octave plus two, fifteen. The Soprano was 3½ by 1½ inches, in the key of F, at $37.50 including shipping. Every one shipped with an instructional brochure carrying fingering diagrams and a short history.
The transverse flutes: six-hole traditional fingering, cylindrical bore, tuned to A-440, better than two octaves, with chromatics by cross-fingering or half-holing “much the same as a fife, tin whistle, or recorder”. Eighteen inches in F, sixteen in G.
The Spirit Vessel, 13 inches tall, raku fired earthenware:
One chromatic octave in harmony. The right hand plays the chromatic scale; the left hand plays the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 6th intervals.
A harmony instrument with a division of labor between the hands. Worth setting beside Alan Albright’s doubles and John Stewart Sumner’s two-chambered patent of 1938 — three Americans solving the same problem in three different ways.
The crafts circuit
For years he took the instruments up and down the East Coast — ten juried shows in a season, from Rhinebeck and Chautauqua to the Philadelphia Folk Festival, the National Flute Association Convention in Washington, and Paradise City in his own town.
Alan Albright, writing from Maine in August 1999, called him “‘THE’ ocarina man on the crafts circuit”.
Albright also claimed him. By his account, he and David Petraglia and Alan Supina worked out ocarina-pendants from rubber moulds at the Chardavogne collective, and this “did inspire a couple of competitors at the WBAI Christmas Craft Show — Doug Diehl and Robin Hodgkinson — to take up the idea of the four-holer and make their own versions from extruded clay.” Both, he adds, “first denied that their creation had anything to do with us”.
The museum records that as Albright’s account and not as established fact. It is one man’s memoir, written twenty years after, about a competitor. It is also not contradicted by anything else the museum holds, and it fits: Hodgkinson was already making flutes in other materials before the clay four-holer appears.
When did he start? Three answers, and they do not conflict
His own site, on a page last updated in May 2000, says “I have been making simple flutes for over twenty five years” — so from about 1975. Albright dates his taking up of the four-holer to about 1977–78. These are not in conflict: a flute maker in bamboo and wood from the mid-1970s, who added the clay ocarina after seeing one done.
From Mud to Music, three times
He exhibited in From Mud to Music: A Show of Ceramic Musical Instruments at The Clay Place, Seattle. Sandi and Richard Schmidt staged “From Mud To Music” at the Clay Occasion Gallery, Pike Place Market, in 1987, and Richard wrote The Sounds of Ceramics for its program.
Same title, same city, same subject, overlapping years — and whether they are the same show, a sequel or a coincidence is not established. The museum does not assert it.
What is established is the third use of the name. The 2006 book From Mud to Music: Making and Enjoying Ceramic Musical Instruments lists both Robin Hodgkinson of Clay-Wood-Winds and Richard and Sandi Schmidt of ClayZeness Whistleworks among its contributors, along with John Taylor, Susan Rawcliffe, Brian Ransom, Frank Giorgini and the Gruppo Ocarinistico Budriese. Sandi Schmidt told the museum in September 2026 that the book took its name from her and Richard’s exhibition. So the 1987 show named the 2006 book, and the phrase became the standard name for the subject.
Chronology
Dates the museum has been able to establish, and where each comes from.
| — | Introduced in college to the clay whistles and flutes of pre-Columbian Central and South America, and “fascinated by the quality of the sounds produced by clay” | his own site, about.htm |
| c. 1975 | Begins making simple flutes — “I have been making simple flutes for over twenty five years”, on a page last updated May 30, 2000. In bamboo, acrylic tubing, metal tubing and lathe-turned exotic hardwoods, each with “its own particular voice” | his own site |
| c. 1977–78 | Takes up the four-hole clay ocarina, on Alan Albright’s account of the WBAI Christmas Craft Show | Albright, “Dance to the Music of the Ocarina, Wilhemina”, August 11, 1999 |
| Aug 11, 1999 | Albright: “Robin is still at it 22 years later, ‘THE’ ocarina man on the crafts circuit” | Albright’s memoir |
| by 2000 | Clay-Wood-Winds, a one-man studio in Haydenville, western Massachusetts | his own site |
| by 2000 | Three lines: four-hole whistle ocarinas, six-hole transverse flutes, and the Spirit Vessels | his own site |
| 2000–2001 | Ten juried craft shows a year on the East Coast, including the National Flute Association Convention and the Philadelphia Folk Festival | his own site, exhibitions.htm |
| — | Museum and gallery exhibitions, including Clay: Every Day Plus Sunday at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Fine Tuning at the Ohio Craft Museum, and From Mud to Music at The Clay Place, Seattle | his own site |
| 2006 | Listed as a contributor to Barry Hall’s From Mud to Music | the book’s contributors list |
| by 2022 | The domain has lapsed and been refilled by a content farm. Those pages are in the museum’s copy because they were at the address; they are not his | the mirror |
What the museum holds of clay-wood-winds.com, and on what terms: Clay-Wood-Winds.