Organbuilder, employed since 2022.

Together with Jacques Helling, Nelis worked for Slooff Orgelbouw BV until that company was dissolved and the employees joined Flentrop Orgelbouw BV. With forty-three years of service, he brought a lot of experience with him. Almost all facets of organ building are familiar to him. In addition to new construction and maintenance of mechanical organs, his field of expertise is also pneumatics and electro-pneumatics. The Netherlands still has many of these types of organs, and these organs are also worth maintaining and preserving.

Nelis’ hobby is collecting types of wood, something that, of course, has some common ground with organ building. He receives raw pieces of wood from all over the world and from many botanical gardens, which he dries and processes into standard-sized sample boards in his shed. These sample boards are not just for his own use. Under the flag of an international association, he and a few other collectors have set up a ‘trade’ in which his samples find their way to other collectors. With approximately seven thousand different wood-types, he has one of the largest private collections worldwide. Besides collecting, another of his activities is describing shrub wood species for the magazine of this association.