The firm became Rudall, Carte & Company in 1872. In addition to their instruments and publications, the firm promoted concerts, for a time under the management of Richard Carte’s son, Richard D’Oyly Carte, who later made his fortune promoting the operas of Gilbert & Sullivan.

Rudall, Rose & Carte, as they became, bought the business of Thomas Key, military musical instrument maker, adding brass and percussion instruments to their catalogue. Richard Carte, a brilliant businessman, joined the firm as a partner in the early 1850s and transformed them from a small business producing high- quality flutes to a hugely-successful concern that produced and sold flutes and most other instruments as well as publishing books, music and, for eight decades, The Musical Directory, an annual guide to the music business in Britain. The firm went on to buy the British rights to manufacture Boehm’s 1847 cylindrical flute, which is the basis of the instrument most flute players use today. The original firm, Rudall & Rose, produced simple-system flutes of the highest quality before they were persuaded by Richard Carte, a student of George Rudall, to begin production of Theobald Boehm’s early conical flute. For much of their existence almost every professional flute player and most serious amateurs in Britain played on one of this firm’s instruments.

The firm of Rudall & Rose, later Rudall, Rose & Carte, and finally Rudall Carte, dominated flute making in Britain for a century and a half from their founding in 1822.

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