The search page has been rebuilt as a catalogue browser: seven filters — maker, country, material, movement, condition, category and date — each carrying the number of instruments standing behind it, and a text search that understands word forms, partial words and a misspelt maker's name.
The search page has been rebuilt. Until now it did little more than look for a string of letters, and an empty query returned an empty page; it now opens onto the whole collection — close to three hundred instruments — and exists to be narrowed down rather than merely interrogated.
Seven headings stand alongside the results: category, maker, country, material, movement, condition and dating. Each option carries the number of instruments behind it, so the shape of the collection is visible before anything is clicked, and a choice that would lead nowhere never presents itself. Selections made within a single heading widen the search, selections across different headings narrow it — brass and wood together return every instrument using either, while mercury and brass together return only those that are both. The counts adjust with each choice. With over a hundred and thirty makers recorded, the maker list carries its own search box; dating is grouped by half-century, from before 1750 to the middle of the last century. Where a record is silent — an unsigned instrument, a case whose timber was never identified — a "not specified" option keeps it within reach instead of quietly excluding it from every result.
On a telephone the filters fold into a panel that stays open while one works through them, reporting the running total as it changes. Each category page now also carries a "refine this category" link, handing whatever was on screen straight to the filters.
