Richard Hamlett
A South Carolina maker who found the instrument on an English four-hole pendant at a Renaissance Fair, and built a range of eleven- and twelve-hole transverses around it.
Richard Hamlett made ocarinas one at a time, to order, and sold them from hamlettocarinas.com. He was explicit that it was not a trade: “This is not a business, it’s a passion. I don’t make ocarinas to pay the bills.”
Richard Hamlett is living and has not been asked about this page. Nothing from his site is reproduced here beyond short quotations; the chronology below is built from his own words in two places — his website, and an interview he gave in 2013 — and every row names where it came from.
He grew up in rural Virginia, lived in New Jersey while serving in the US Air Force, and moved to South Carolina in about 2003. His day job was in information systems, administering a corporate SharePoint installation.
How he found it
At a Renaissance Fair in Charlotte, North Carolina, in about 2009, he came across a stand of hundreds of five-hole pendant ocarinas using the English cross fingering system, and a girl at the booth playing folk tunes loudly enough to carry across the fairway. He bought one, imagining playing it while backpacking.
Weeks later, wanting more range and a deeper sound, he bought a 12-hole Focalink Alto C — his introduction to the transverse style he would go on to make.
Why he started making
After about a year of playing he had bought from a number of makers without finding one that suited him: some weak in the high notes, some with inconsistent breath requirements or poor balance between chambers, some good instruments badly shaped for the hand.
So he began, in about 2010. He started with a high-fired stoneware that could not be glazed properly at low-fired temperatures, and wasted considerable effort before switching to low-fired earthenware — the mistake he said he would go back and prevent if he could.
What he aimed at was “a professional concert quality ocarina at an affordable price”, because the instruments he could buy seemed to him inconsistent and overpriced. They were Asian-style transverse ocarinas, not Italian — “usually having a slightly extended range and generally lower breath requirements” — tuned to concert pitch, made one at a time as each was ordered.
Chronology
Dates the museum has been able to establish, and where each comes from. Those marked “c.” are his own approximations, given in 2013.
| — | Grows up in rural Virginia; later lives in New Jersey while serving in the US Air Force | the 2013 interview |
| c. 1989 | Married — “I have been married for 24 years”, said in 2013 | the 2013 interview |
| c. 2003 | Moves to South Carolina, still there in 2013, “for the past 10 years” | the 2013 interview |
| c. 2009 | Discovers the ocarina at a Renaissance Fair in Charlotte, North Carolina — hundreds of five-hole pendants on the English cross fingering system | the 2013 interview |
| c. 2009 | Buys a 12-hole Focalink Alto C, his introduction to the transverse style | the 2013 interview |
| c. 2010 | Begins making, after a year of playing and of buying instruments that did not suit him | the 2013 interview |
| early on | Starts with a high-fired stoneware that cannot be glazed at low-fired temperatures; switches to low-fired earthenware | the 2013 interview |
| by 2013 | Day job in information systems. “This is not a business, it’s a passion. I don’t make ocarinas to pay the bills.” | the 2013 interview; his site |
| Jul 2013 | Interviewed for The Ocarina Repository | the interview |
| 2013–2018 | hamlettocarinas.com sells made-to-order instruments, one at a time | his site; the Archive |
| by 2018 | At least nine models, each with its own fingering chart | his site, downloads/ |
| by 2018 | He reaches the multi-chamber instrument he had hoped for — the site carries a fingering chart for a double Alto C, against his earlier statement that he offered single chambers but “hope[d] to expand soon” | his site, downloads/ |
| Feb 2018 | The last announcement posted on the site | the mirror |
| 2018–2025 | The site stays up, and stops changing. No new announcements, but the Archive keeps capturing his own pages — 234 in 2019, 197 in 2021 — through August 2025 | the Archive’s capture index |
| by Dec 2024 | The site is compromised. Directories of Chinese betting spam appear on the domain alongside his pages, not in place of them, and by September 2025 an injected script sits inside his own templates/ folder. An unmaintained Joomla install is the likeliest explanation |
the Archive’s capture index; the mirror |
| by Sep 2026 | hamlettocarinas.com no longer answers, on any scheme | checked September 16, 2026 |
What the museum holds of hamlettocarinas.com, and the permission it owes him: Hamlett Ocarinas.