Geoff Lawton designed and made mouthpieces from the early 1960s, initially under the Lawton-Barton brand. Following the death of Dennis Barton the brand changed to Lawton in 1965 and the design was updated, producing what we have called the "Early Lawton".

Geoff spent a lot of time trying new ideas for mouthpieces, using different materials, experimenting with different shapes of chamber and throat, various baffle designs and a range of facing curves and tip sizes. Many of these experimental prototypes were never sold publicly, but sub-pages of this section of the website describe and show the following commercially available models and variants:

Minor Ligature Variations

As well as the main models and variants listed above and described on other pages, Lawton produced a few variations that related to the ligature.

  • No slide-on ligature grooves: When the soprano was introduced in September 1978 it was produced initially without the familiar slide-on single-screw ligature, grooves and mouthpiece cap, which were added in January 1979. A small number of other mouthpieces were produced at various times without the ligature grooves.

  • Metal inlays for ligature grooves on ebonite models: Lawton has provided some ebonite models with metal grooves inset into the ebonite, presumably to reinforce them or to allow the ligature to slide more smoothly.

  • Ligature with rubber clamping plate: When Lawton introduced the High Resonance Chamber model it was advertised in the A4 leaflet as having a "rubber clamping plate". This was an alternative to the ligature's curved metal plate against the reed, but this variation seems to be very rare.