French Bows of the 19th Century
A Speech by Phil Kass
Today, it is virtually impossible to give any presentation on the subject of French bows without being
keenly aware of an unseen presence who rests in the minds of both speaker and audience. This is all the
more certain since last summer. That presence, of course, is Bernard Millant, as his book L’Archet has
done much to frame both our thinking and our discussions on the subject. In my review of this book in The
Strad last winter, I made the comment that a historical overview of French Bowmaking, especially with
regards to the 19th century, was sadly lacking from the book. Shortly thereafter M. Millant wrote to me to
say that he had deliberately left this out, his intention being to leave it to others such as myself to assemble
that framework. This therefore is the challenge that I address today. I should add that I consider it a “work
in progress” and could well find that I have changed my mind, contradicted myself, or disagreed with
everything I’ve said today before the year is out, so please bear with me and feel free to add your own
observations at the appropriate opportunities.
My remarks will be concentrated on the evolution of bowmaking style and design in the 19 th century. This
one century represents an extraordinary transition from the endeavors of the Tourtes to the modern concept
of bow. It marks a development that could be justly compared to that which occurred at a same level of
development in violin making, the two centuries that began with the ascension of the Brothers Amati in the
late 1580s to the spread of Napoleonic conformity at the beginning of the 1800s. The bow of 1800 is
dramatically different from that of 1900; the differences between the bow of 1900 and that of 2000 are
marginal save for the higher degree of finish and professionalism one sees in the newer bows.
I also wish to direct my comments primarily to Mirecourt. This small town in the Vosges, densely
populated with musical instrument makers, has had an astonishing influence on French bowmaking. The
story of Paris is irrevocably tied to the story of Mirecourt. The finest bowmakers of Paris were almost
always just the finest craftsmen of Mirecourt, transplanted to a locale with wealthier and more discerning
clients, greater opportunity for business expansion, and better food and wine. Most all of the production of
higher quality commercial bows in France has also come from its artisans. This involves lots of craftsmen
making lots of bows constantly, and there is no better way to gain fluency, speed and accuracy than in such
an environment. In this sense, Mirecourt provided an incubator not dissimilar to that of Cremona during its
greatest years, in that its children grew up in an environment saturated with the instrument craft. Its
ordinary practitioners could develop a skill unmatched by most other craftsmen, but its most gifted and
original minds could create something extraordinary.
Mirecourt’s celebrity and acumen arose, in my view, from two essential ingredients: patronage and
commerce. The patrons were the Dukes of Lorrain, great lovers and supporters of music, who ruled the
town until their territory became part of France in 1766 and who blessed it with continuous requests for
musical instruments. The commerce arose from Mirecourt’s remarkable and enterprising merchants, who
traveled worldwide even in the late 1400s. These merchants recognized the commercial potential of the
instruments and bows of Mirecourt, and by developing an international market for them, enabled their
creators to live by their craft and, more importantly, hone their skills and refine their ideas into a product, in
our case, the bow, which could stand unrivalled by those of other towns and traditions.
My interest in studies in Mirecourt arose initially because of this merchant tradition, specifically the Lete
family which had an important branch office in Turin. The patriarch of the family had been a surveyor, but
his children and grandchildren, through judicious marriages, made alliances in the spice, lace and musical
instrument trades. Their far-flung enterprises included at various times offices in Paris, Mirecourt, Nancy,
Bruxelles, Turin, New York, and St. Martinsville, Louisiana. While probably not instrument makers, they
must have known their products well enough to judge quality and usefulness, and we can trace in their
activities, and those of their colleagues, the origins of the modern day violin dealer. The Paris office
originated with a brother-un-law, Jean Baptiste Payonne, and later his nephew, Nicolas Antoine Lete, who
was married to the daughter of Francois Pique. This last mentioned, Nicolas Antoine, spent several years
in New York as a musical instrument importer before establishing a shop in Paris, at which time he
imported Jean Baptiste Vuillaume and thus changed the course both of French violin making and
international violin commerce.
While researching the Turin connections, I discovered numerous areas of overlap with bowmakers both
known and unknown. The Etat Civile in Mirecourt proved to be a rich and rewarding source of
information, far richer than similar records in England. In my English studies, I had felt that there was a
strong chance of being able to find identities to many of the “Old English” bows through understanding the
cast of characters, and indeed it proved possible to identify the work of most of the Dodd and Tubbs family
bows. Perhaps it would also be possible to do so regarding the bulk of unknown bows lumped into the
category of “Old Mirecourt”.
This unfortunately has not proven to be the case. In Mirecourt, there are far too many bowmakers, and
their family associations, relations, and friends, as indicated by Civil Registry, proved illusory. A good
example of this can be seen in a bow branded MAUCHARD which a few years back came through my
hands. I was able to consult my references and draw a life story of Nicolas Mauchard out of a marriage act
and a few birth and death records. This told only part of the story. I sent this information on the bow in
question, along with photos, to M. Millant, and it appears in his book. Mauchard first appears in Mirecourt
at the time of his marriage in 1822, already practicing as a facteur d’archets, and wedding that day to
Angelique Frebinet, the daughter of a mason. There are no indications from the marriage act as to where his
training arose. In 1829, his wife’s cousin married Nicolas Simon, who, along with Joseph Harmand, acted
as witnesses to the births and deaths of several children during the 1830s and early 1840s. We know the
Simon FR bows, and a handful of Joseph Harmand bows, the former much inspired by the Adam approach
to Tourte, and later with more of a Peccatte influence, and the surviving Harmand bows share a similar
pedigree. Nothing in their style would suggest that Mauchard learned from either of them. The one
identified Mauchard is in the full-blown classic Maire/Pajeot style, and indeed the same bow can be seen in
the Roda book as a Pajeot. If one did not have this bow, however, one would never deduce such a style.
This is also true of the better known makers, for example, Maire, Maline, and Fonclause, who were all
friends and witnesses to one another’s important family events, and who can all be traced one way or
another to the Pajeot workshop, but who each came to such divergent conclusions about bowmaking that
one would not immediately connect their work without the oral and written tradition. When we have such a
problem with well known and prolific makers, the problem with the obscure and unidentified becomes
overwhelming.
A true measure of the scale of the dilemma comes through the rosters of bowmakers active in Mirecourt
during the 19th century. In L’Archet there are recorded 232 bowmakers who were identified as such is civil
documents in Mirecourt but whose work is completely unknown and unidentified by us today; the number
who were active during the first half of the 19th century is no less than 83. Not all of these makers were
always making bows, and in a few cases I suspect that their description as such was a mistake on the part of
the Registrar rather than a firm statement of profession, but nonetheless the magnitude of the difficulty
becomes apparent.
If we cannot name every unknown bow from Mirecourt, though, we can at least place some framework on
the craft and tradition as a whole, and the 19th century is a vital territory to understand its evolution. While
it is likely that every bowmaker in a town of 15,000 could know every other bowmaker, it is hardly
essential for each to have studied with the most influential craftsmen in order to work in a style similar to
them. Tracing the changes in style should give us the proper framework for dating Mirecourt’s
bowmaking.
Our story, then, must begin at the end of the 18 th century, just after the Revolution, when there are two
currents of bowmaking, two sets of ideas, which serve to define the new century. The first could be
considered the flowering of the old style, and the second the rise to dominance of the new style.
By ‘Old’ I refer to the types of bows being made until the advent of the Tourtes, being the last of the
Cramer and earlier models. These generally had hatchet heads of various forms and open and often heavily
ornamented frogs, but the general style of work I would describe thus:
Heads: low models, sometimes hatchet style, slightly hollowed in the faces, especially for the work of
Louis Simon Pajeot, and made according to personal models which feature some degree of rounding off at
the edges.
Sticks: usually heavier in proportion in both round and octagonal shapes.
Frogs: long and low, often with rounded heels, heavy ornamentation, short (or no) ferrules, and deep U
shaped throats.
Buttons: usually with either a single flat collar or none at all, occasionally flared and ornamented when the
frogs are also ornamented.
Such makers as Meauchand, Duchaine, and Gabriel Lagarde immediately come to mind, but the best
representative of this tradition is, in my view, Louis Simon Pajeot. His distinctive slanting heads as well as
the variety and intricacy of decoration that he used on his frogs and buttons is echoed for many years after
his death in 1804 by such later masters as François Gaulard (who was probably his pupil) and the sons of
Gabriel Lagarde, Antoine, Jean and Jean Baptiste.
It would be wrong to state that this type of bow ornamentation as practiced by this group was entirely
passé, indeed it remained in fashion well into the 1820s, and in modernized form, much later. The use of
open frogs, similarly, was retained long after this era, such bows being made by most all of the more
progressive figures into the 1860s. The use of added metalwork added cost, and there clearly remained a
demand for very inexpensive bows from every workshop, just as was the case in England.
One usually expects the old-fashioned to disappear with its aged practitioners, but we, living in our selfconscious Retro world, ought to know better. As it were, some of the characteristics of the Old were
adopted and enhanced, combined with ideas from the New to create something quite bold and original, but
of that I will say more momentarily.
The ‘New’ I characterize as the style adopted by Mirecourt’s disciples of the Tourtes, whose style was
carried back to Mirecourt either in the form of bows or bowmakers who, having completed their
apprenticeships or employments in the Capital, returned to their native homes with new skills and ideas. It
has been believed, on the basis of workmanship, that Tourte T might have employed the services of Jean
Adam and perhaps even Etienne Pajeot in making the bows from his workshop, and this could well have
been the vehicle by which the Paris style was exported to Mirecourt. In this category of ‘New’ style
bowmakers, I would place Jean Adam and his son Jean Dominique, known collectively after 1800 as the
GrandAdams, the brothers Nicolas and Joseph Harmand, Dominique Henry Jonvaux, and Michel Genin,
among others. I leave to a different discussion those noted Mirecurteans Eury and Persoit, both of whom
left for Paris and never returned.
Bowmakers do not work in a vacuum; they create what they do with the desire to sell it, and the Tourte
style was very salable. For the idea to succeed, it required performers to show its superiority to what
preceded. That superiority is sometimes just a reflection of generational trends, which color all human
creativity. The Tourte concept, however, was a milestone, though its success required some additional
assistance in the art of violin playing and teaching.
That help came in the form of the Paris Conservatory, founded in 1795 and continued in various
incarnations to the present. French violin playing had been influenced throughout the 18 th century by fine
Torinese violinists who performed in Paris at such venues as the Concerts Spirituels, but the arrival of
Giovanni Battista Viotti in 1782 changed everything. Viotti had a strong, energetic, and musically
vigorous style of both playing and composing that anticipated the Romantic Era. It was radically different
from the older style then current and which left violinists both speechless and thrilled. He stayed in Paris
for ten years, and by the time he left for England with the Revolution, he had profoundly influenced the
way that the violin was played. His bow of preference was a Tourte, and others quickly adopted it. His
chief disciples were Pierre Rode, Rodolphe Kreutzer, and Pierre Baillot, this last mentioned of tremendous
importance as he and his pupil, Francois Habeneck, became faculty members at the Conservatory, the
former in 1795, the latter in 1804, and they remained the most influential teachers until the late 1840s. The
smart bowmaker could tell which way the wind was blowing. A similar transition in cello performance
came about through the influence first of the great cellists Janson and the Duports, and later through the
Conservatory faculty, Jean Henri Levasseur and Charles Nicolas Baudiot.
Most of the bowmakers of this ‘New’ style followed a general form that represented an incomplete copy of
Leonard and Francois Tourte. I would characterize this class of bow thusly:
Heads: low to moderate in height, but growing gradually higher towards the 1830s, with flat cheeks and the
front ridge filed to a point, often in such a manner that the center is more hollowed than either the top or
bottom surfaces.
Sticks: often thicker and less cambred behind the head, and more often octagonal in shape, with the
secondary corner facets less deeply planed than the primary facets of the square.
Frogs: longer and lower, without underplates, usually with one-piece heels that terminate short of the stick,
and with shallower U shaped throats and square or rectangular sharp-edged ferrules.
Buttons: in three parts, fitted with a single flat collar and more often than not with octagonal bands.
These characteristics soften, especially towards the late 1820s, in reaction to a new trend. That trend can be
summed up with the two words Etienne Pajeot.
It is purely accidental that Pajeot’s entry into bowmaking corresponded with the collapse of the Napoleonic
Empire and the end of decades of war, but his originality and creativity are echoed in many other spheres of
French life, as soldiers returned home from the front, having seen the world, and chose not to go back to the
way things had always been. The Revolution and Napoleon had shaken the old order to its roots;
notwithstanding the return of the King to the throne, he would find it a far harder throne to retain than had
his forebearers. A wide range of new scientific ideas had arisen before the Revolution, and had developed
further during Napoleon’s rule, and a great deal of experimentation followed during the next few decades, a
period in which new discoveries in biology, metals, chemicals, and photography developed.
Pajeot began as a successor to his father’s style and rapidly evolved into something far more interesting.
Early in his career he began to promote himself around the country, and he probably deserves the credit for
being the first bowmaker to establish a large workshop employing many bowmakers. Since these ranks
included such masters as Maire, Maline, and Fonclause, the workshop exerted an influence that ranged far
beyond Mirecourt. He was extremely inventive where it came to innovations on the bow: his underslide
with thumbseat protector, the buttons with welded collars, and innovations in the screw and eyelet and
mortises were either uniquely his or were handled in his own personal manner. He also created a selfrehairing system for bows predating that which Vuillaume later patented. The double-pearl facing and the
elaborate floral decorations of some of the later bows originate in his work and can be seen as evolving
from those decorating his father’s bows.
From a stylistic view, his work is among the most important and influential of its era. The heads are high,
flowing and elegant, hollowed in the cheeks, and rounded off at the forward ridge. The sticks are usually
of wood of superb quality, thinner at the throat and more cambred. The frogs are higher than average, with
shallower throats, often with personal styles of ornamentation, sometimes slightly higher at the ferrule than
at the heelplate, and fitted with one-piece heelplates that run to the underslide. The buttons are chunky and
generous and are fitted with his trademark double collar. By the 1830s, we see underslides which are fitted
with various types of pins and with the trademark protective thumb plate welded to the forward edge.
Significantly, we see nickel and other metals used in less visible parts, especially the underplates and the
welded collars on the buttons.
Not surprisingly, his style of work strongly influenced his contemporaries, and his ideas can be glimpsed in
the later works of Nicolas Harmand, Dominique GrandAdam and his son Jean, Charles Guinot, Joseph
Gaudé, Georges Ury, and Nicolas Mauchard, this last almost certainly a pupil or employee for many years.
It is no surprise that we see his influence throughout the 1820s and 1830s, given his prominence as a
neighbor and employer, nor that we see it taper off into the 1840s, given his retirement and death in 1849.
To our list if those affected by the Pajeot concept must also be added Claude Joseph Fonclause and Nicolas
Maire, as well as Nicolas Maline, who worked for Pajeot but who probably studied with Maire. These
three initially followed the Pajeot example, but later in their careers followed very different directions on
the basis of what was soon to happen in Paris. Even there, though, the Pajeot style had influence, and was
in Mirecourt the dominant stylistic influence into the 1840s, surviving until another dramatic sea-change in
the late 1850s.
As I’d mentioned early on, Vuillaume was a Mirecurtean export, shipped off to Paris in 1818 and
subsequently followed the tradition of the merchant-luthier. He too began to employ the services of
bowmakers. In 1826, he in turn imported a young man as a bowmaker, one Dominique Peccatte.
Peccatte was the son of a hairdresser or a wigmaker, in those days they were the same, and he was trained
in that profession; his proper training in bows came from Persoit. Faced with the dominance of the Tourte
form, he based his style upon it, modifying it in accordance with his own instincts to create something quite
personal and spontaneous. I will make myself unpopular if I state that it was so spontaneous as to be erratic
and even somewhat rough in finish; better to say then that some of his bows lack the finesse and polish of
his finest contemporaries and predecessors, and that some of his ideas, such as the use of iron screws to
hold down the underslides, would have been best left on the drawing board. Nonetheless, he had a
profound innate sense of what made a good bow, and very quickly won over player. This helped to make a
great deal of money for J.B. Vuillaume, and in a rare instance of justice, ultimately a great deal of money
for himself.
Peccatte stayed with Vuillaume until 1837, when he left to take over the Lupot workshop, but many
bowmakers were inspired by his ideas. The general form of the Peccatte bow can be seen in many
Mirecourt bows from the 1840s until the 1860s, first often melded with that of Pajeot during the 1830s and
later fully on its own. Such important makers as Pierre Simon, Nicolas Maire, and Nicolas Maline visibly
adapt their styles under its influence.
The classic Peccatte has a more moderate hatchet-style head, less rounded but with full cheeks, filed flat at
the bottom rear, and with a forward ridge that usually slips off to the left when viewed from above. The
sticks, usually round, have an interesting triangular form in cross section, wider at the bottom than the top,
which gives them additional lateral strength. The frogs have square throats, dug deeper on the side nearest
the underslide, ferrules with softened edges, underrslides attached with iron screws, and heelplates in two
parts, the back portion slotted into a channel and the bottom attached to a pearl slide that runs full-length.
Lastly, the buttons usually haeve a gentle flare and a double-cut collar.
His prime disciples, if they could be called that, would have been his brother Francois, and the great
masters Pierre Simon and Joseph Henry, who later worked as partners. The Peccatte influence can be seen
in the work of Simon FR. as well as the work of two other bowmakers whose children would influence the
future course of events - Francois Bazin and Claude Charles Husson.
Peccatte, and many of his former neighbors, were all drawn to Paris by Vuillaume’s constant requirements
for fine bowmakers. He probably did more to inspire the craft than any individual bowmaker of that time
or since. Fortunately for Mirecourt, not all of its finest sons left for Paris, never to return. Peccatte himself
returned to Mirecourt in 1847, leaving the shop in the hands of Simon. He lived a comfortable and wellheeled existence tending his grapevines and, presumably, enjoying the fruits of all his labors.
There had been a generational change at the Conservatory at this time. The new faculty included Delphin
Alard, a student of Habeneck who was also to become J.B. Vuillaume’s son-in-law, and Leopold Dancla, a
pupil of Baillot. Alard used Vuillaume bows, especially one created by Peccatte, and it followed that his
pupils, and their pupils, would want the same.
I have not dwelt upon what was happening politically and financially for Mirecourt during those years, so a
brief aside is called for. Wars and revolutions generally make for bad business; Mirecourt was affected by
the wars of Napoleon and experienced a revival once the fighting had stopped. France politically remained
volatile, with revolutions against its governments in 1830 and 1848 in which the monarchies were
replaced. While the economy revived in the 1850s, there were periods of weakness, especially after the
1830 revolution, caused by serious cholera outbreaks in 1832 and 1854. Trade was also badly affected by
the American Civil War and later by the war with Prussia, which resulted in the overthrow of Napoleon III
and the establishment of the Third Republic.
In this turbulent environment, a certain safety can be had in numbers, which perhaps helped to encourage a
factory system which came to dominate the latter half of the century. Preceding these were the large
workshops maintained by the more successful makers; among the bowmakers, these included Pajeot and
later his pupil Maire. It also encouraged collectives, such as one established by Jean Joseph Martin in
1863. From our post-Cold War vantage point, it may seem obvious to us that the capitalist factory would
survive and prosper, whereas the socialist collective would fail in bankruptcy, but this was by no means
obvious or inevitable, especially to workers who were used to self-employment and who viewed such
business arrangements as more of an extended family. From a financial standpoint, though, what followed
was that the rich grew richer and the poor poorer, and thus success was even more predicated on leaving for
Paris.
In 1855, one of these craftsmen left for employment with his cousin J.B. Vuillaume in Paris. He was
Francois Nicolas Voirin, the son of a gardener. For the next 15 years he worked for low wages for his
cousin, during which time he revolutionized bow design and construction.
M. Millant made comment of a change in style from a square head to a rounded head that took place
between 1850 and 1860. That change I suspect represents once again the periodic generational shifts that
the craft has always known. We can only guess whether it reflected a desire to experiment with something
different, or the inspiration of a great craftsman by a bow with more rounded features, or the liking of a
player for a particular bow with these characteristics. Perhaps it was even residual influence from the
Pajeot style. Whatever the cause, we can see it reflected in this period first in the work of Simon and
almost simultaneously with that of Voirin who was his pupil.
Voirin took it one more step, creating something that was quite unique. His strong, precise rounded heads,
with their clean, sharp, even chamfers, are a model of elegance. They grow more and more delicate
towards 1880. The sticks are usually round, shaped in a vertical oval, and with exquisite cambre and
graduation. At the throat, they are delicate, with a subtle hollow leading the transition from head to stick.
We see something similar in Simon FR, though not as sophisticated, and perhaps this is where Voirin got
the idea, but the student far exceeded his master, and while this subtle transition was often copied by others,
it was never duplicated. His frogs are well hollowed in the faces, of moderate height, and with exactly
fitted metalwork, all pinned, and elegant in proportion. The buttons with double-cut collars are equally
delicate and precise.
Within a very short period, this type of bow dominated the craft, and indeed this style remains with us to
this day, bowmakers adhering almost completely to this model until after the last War.
What followed was an era in which the bows got progressively lighter and softer, reaching its peak in the
late 19th century. It has been suggested that the growing ranks of wealthy amateur players created the
demand for this type of bow. Certainly they bought enough of them. However, had makers preferred to
make heavier stiffer bows, and had their teachers recommended them, the amateurs would have willingly
bought them.
I believe that it was primarily player’s demand that was driving this transition. After many years of
powerful bows, I believe that players were now seeking something spritely and quick, and the music they
were hearing from the best players of that time, players such as Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski, both of whom
toured worldwide, had those qualities. It is also interesting to note that the faculty at the Conservatory was
changing further. It also included Girard, who arrived in 1847, Sauzay (in 1860), and Charles Dancla, in
1857, these last figures staying until the next century. All three were students of Baillot. Alard retired in
1875, his place being taken by Maurin and Garcin, both former students. Music in England was being
influenced by the same class of musicians, the leading violinist, Sainton, having been a classmate of
Alard’s, so perhaps there is more than coincidence to similarities between the light Voirin style of bow
being made in Paris and the similar style of bow being made during the same period by James Tubbs of
London.
In any event, whereas Alard used a Vuillaume / Peccatte, Dancla used a Vuillaume made by Voirin, so his
inclination would have been towards that style of bow.
Voirin was succeeded by Joseph Alfred Lamy, also from Mirecourt, and a long list of other Mirecurteans,
working in a similar style, also followed, including the three Thomassins, all cousins with the same
grandparents, and Joseph Arthur Vigneron. These succeeding bowmakers are distinctive in that all gained
their initial experiences through the same individuals in Mirecourt, Francois and Charles Bazin and Claude
Charles Husson. To these we can add Eugene Sartory, a key figure of the next century whose training was
intiially in Mirecourt but whose p[ersonal style truly developed only after an apprenticeship in Paris with
Charles Peccatte. These makers had small workshops that were well-suited to teaching individuality. They
were not, however, the rule any longer.
I have mentioned previously about Martin. He worked for Vuillaume, in a style broadly reminiscent to that
of the young Voirin, and then in 1863 returned to Mirecourt to establish a business, run more or less as a
collective, which unfortunately failed in 1880. His idea might have been to create a shop like that of Maire,
but Maire had long since moved to the Capital since that was where his success was most likely. The
businesses that did succeed in Mirecourt were the big industrial enterprises, the first and most famous being
that of Jerome Thibouville-Lamy, which was followed a few years later by that of Laberte-Magnie.
Thibouville-Lamy arrived in town from Paris in 1861, married the daughter of a well-to-do businessman
(and appended her name to his), and set up a giant enterprise that dominated the industry until the 1960s.
This was true industrialization and mass-production, and if the quality was consistently excellent, the
results were also consistently anonymous, and the average craftsman in Mirecourt ended up their as a lifelong piece goods worker. Ironically, Martin had assisted in setting up the Thibouville-Lamy bowmaking
workshop before devoting his efforts to his own doomed enterprise.
The smaller workshop, though, never died, and in the hands of exceptional businessmen such as Charles
Nicolas Bazin and his colleague Eugene Cuniot-Hury could prove exceptional. Bazin in particular
assembled an outstanding shop, which included the Fetiques and many of the best makers of the next
century.
This, however, brings us to the 20th century, and I think that you might all prefer to look at actual bows
rather than to listen to me any longer. At this point, therefore, allow me to thank you for your patience and
interest, to steer you through the numerous fine bows on display today, and to leave you to your own
devices.