All Galleries in "Classic Sets"
This set was made by Leo Rowsome for Dubliner Seán Seery,
the son of one of Leo’s friends in the Dublin Pipers Club. Seán
was a student of Leo’s at the Club and also at the Municipal
School of Music. It is unique among sets made by Leo in
having a soundbox on the baritone drone as well as the bass.
Seán was born into a musical family. His father Jim was
originally from Rathconrath, near Mullingar, but was settled
in Stoneybatter in Dublin when Seán was born. He was
one of the founder-members of the Dublin Pipers Club and
served as Treasurer of that body, a position which he also
filled with the newly founded Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann
in 1951, which he also helped to found.
Seán was a very successful piper in competition,
winning the ‘triple crown’ of piping in the late 1940s – the
Dublin Feis, the Oireachtas and the Feis Ceoil. He was also
a member of Leo Rowsome’s piping quartets, along with Jim
Dowling and Tommy McCarthy in one phase, and in another
with Leo’s son Leon and Willie Clancy. His death in late 2002
closed a contribution of fifty years to piping in Dublin.
Set made originally for Patsy Touhey by the Taylor Brothers of Philadelphia.
Francis O’Neill wrote of the Taylors as follows:
We are credibly informed that Highland pipes, as well as Irish pipes, were manufactured by the Taylors in Drogheda, and it is quite probable such was the case, because Highland pipes were turned out in the Philadelphia shop. Some medals were awarded the Taylors at the Centennial Exposition held in that city in 1875. The renowned musician and mechanic died in 1901, and his brother “Charley” followed him in about a year, but as neither had ventured to embark on the stormy sea of matrimony there were neither widows nor orphans to mourn their loss. They were sincerely lamented,
however, by all the Irish pipers in the land, for to them the death of the Taylors was a veritable calamity. (Irish Minstrels and Musicians, Chicago 1913)
On the death of Patsy Touhey in 1923 the pipes passed into the possession first of Mike Carney and then his niece Annie – both left-handed pipers like Touhey. Annie subsequently married the New York piper Tom Busby, and in the 1970s they gifted the set to Seán Mac Ciarnán who now plays them.
