SMALL BUT beautiful

In the extensive literature concerning Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, there is very little about one of his more remarkable innovations: a refinement of the bow frog design that can be seen on many examples from his workshop. Michel Samson explains how the so-called ‘Alard’ bow was designed to make life easier for players and makers alike

A great deal has been written about the multifaceted career of Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume. There have been meticulously researched biographies, anniversary publications and, certainly not least, the catalogue for the Vuillaume exhibition marking the 1998 opening of the Musée de la Musique in Paris. To the reader of the aforementioned accounts, Vuillaume might look like the P.T. Barnum of violin dealing of his day. However, for the sake of completeness, I will start at the beginning.

Vuillaume was born on 7 October 1798 into a wellestablished family of Mirecourt violin makers. After completing his apprenticeship, the restless and ambitious young luthier found his way to the French capital and established his own shop at 40 rue des Petits-Champs. By 1828 he was a welltrained craftsman as well as an astute businessman.

During this period there was a great surge in demand for historic Italian violins, and Vuillaume’s business acumen swiftly brought him commercial success. This financial stability allowed him to focus on research in the fields of acoustics, and experimental violin and bow making. Together with acoustics specialist Félix Savart he studied the vibrations of historic Italian instruments and explored innovative designs such as the giant ‘Octobass’ and a large-sized viola he called the ‘contralto’. He developed a ‘self-rehairing’ bow (see In Focus, June 2017), experimented with making a bow out of steel in an attempt to find alternatives to rare pernambuco, and gave his bows elegant embellishments, such as embedding a Stanhope lens in the frog instead of a mother-of-pearl eye. When the viewer looked through the lens, they might see a portrait of a violinist such as Nicolò Paganini or Jean-Delphin Alard, although several of Vuillaume’s bows contained a photograph of himself holding a violin. In large part, his enduring renown among bow makers can be credited to his pioneering analysis of examples made by François Xavier Tourte.

However, there is one innovation of Vuillaume’s that has often been overlooked, and which addressed some crucial aspects of bow making. In essence, it is this: where a typical ebony bow frog would have a mortise at the back, in these bows it was moved all the way forward to the other end (figure1).

This simple innovation accomplished two very important things. Firstly, it made it quicker and easier to rehair the bow. Secondly, it meant that the mortise holding the wooden plug to keep the hair in place was on the same level as the rest of the frog. Therefore, inserting the hair ribbon tightly into this mortise eliminated the need for a ferrule, and made the design far simpler. There would be no more need for pearl slides or metal parts, and yet the visual effect was still quite appealing.

During the middle of the 19th century it must have been quite difficult (especially for travelling virtuosos) to find a luthier or bow maker who could reliably rehair a bow. Perhaps such people could only be found in big cities, or towns like Mirecourt where bow making was a traditional occupation. It was not for nothing that Vuillaume, and before him Étienne Pajeot, looked for ways to help players rehair their own bows, hence the ‘self-rehairing’ design mentioned earlier. By moving the mortise, Vuillaume must have had in mind a simplification of the rehairing process itself. He must also have expected this innovation to be more successful than it eventually became, given that he also made a version for his cheaper ‘Stentor’ line of merchandise, produced predominantly in Mirecourt.

In the French literature pertaining to Vuillaume bows, when authors comment on frogs with the mortise at the front, they persistently call it an ‘open frog’. This can be misleading because, in my opinion, the playing qualities of these frogs are quite different from those of the open frog, where the mortise is always at the back.

There have been other bow makers who have attempted to improve, or at least change, the design and construction of the frog, such as the English bow maker James Tubbs. If a Tubbs bow has not been tampered with, the person charged with the task of rehairing one will discover that there is no space for a spreading wedge, which spreads the hair against the ferrule (figure2). All Tubbs bows that carry his stamp are made that way. According to William Retford’s 1964 book Bows and Bowmakers, Tubbs did this to make the task of rehairing easier, as well as to determine the number of hairs (110–150 on violin bows).

Another aspect of Vuillaume’s invention reflects his preoccupation with durability. The design of his new frog was very much like the design that has come to be known as the ‘Vuillaume-style’ frog, with the seating on a round surface and the softened edges of the rest of the frog (figure 3, page 36). A less obvious motivation would likely have been Vuillaume’s desire to pay homage to the past. Despite all of his forwardlooking innovations, he remained a man who had boundless respect for the historical aspects of lutherie.

FIGURE 1 Top A conventional bow frog with the mortise at the back. The arrow points to the ‘spreading wedge’, which spreads the hair against the ferrule. Bottom A Vuillaume frog with the mortise at the front.

FIGURE 2 It is rare nowadays to find an untampered-with Tubbs bow. Here is one that fits William Retford’s description, with no spreading wedge.

ALL BOW PHOTOS MICHEL SAMSON

INSERTING THE HAIR RIBBON TIGHTLY INTO THE MORTISE ELIMINATED THE NEED FOR A FERRULE AND MADE THE DESIGN FAR SIMPLER

EXAMPLE 1 This bow by Jean ‘Grand’ Adam is probably the earliest of the four examples shown here. A bow almost exactly like it is illustrated twice in the three-volume work L’Archet by Millant and Raffin: first in the chapter on Vuillaume bows, and second in the chapter on Grand Adam. Both times the illustrated bow is accompanied by the caption: ‘Inspiration Vuillaume’. The only difference with the bow shown here is that the one in L’Archet has a pearl eye on the side. Otherwise, the model of the head is the same. Apart from the underslide there is no metal on these frogs, causing the stick to be slightly tip-heavy. The adjuster is of the same design as the famous wedding bow, in that there is only a small band of silver. The rest is ebony.

EXAMPLE 2 This bow is, in my opinion, the work of Pierre Simon. With most Simon bows we expect to see screws in the bottom slide. In this case there are rather large pins in the place one would expect to see the screws. The button has a collar, as one would expect to see with this maker. The graduation of the stick is extremely elegant.

FIGURE 3 Left Cross-section of a bow frog with traditional, angular seating where the bow stick ‘sits’ Right Cross-section of a ‘Vuillaume-style’ frog with rounded seating

The prototype bow with this new kind of frog is commonly thought to date from 1849, and in the literature it is always referred to as a wedding present to Vuillaume’s future son-in-law, the famed violinist, composer and teacher Jean Delphin Alard. It is mounted in ivory and gold, with an adjuster made from the same materials. One side of the frog features two angels encircling the initials ‘D.A.’ engraved in red (figure 4). On the underside, instead of the typical slide, an ivory caricature of Paganini can be seen. The other side of the frog shows an eagle perched on two rings. The eagle holds a violin in its beak and a bow in its talons. The identity of the craftsman who made the stick for this bow is still disputed, although it is commonly suggested to be Dominique Peccatte.

THESE ‘ALARD’ VIOLIN AND CELLO BOWS WERE ALWAYS MADE IN TANDEM WITH TR ADITIONAL BOWS

FIGURE 4 The ivory frog of the prototype ‘Alard’ bow, presented by Vuillaume as a wedding present to Jean-Delphin Alard in 1849

EXAMPLES 1-4 NATHAN TOLZMANN. ALL OTHER PHOTOS AND DIAGRAM MICHEL SAMSON

In 2012 a bow similar to the Alard wedding present was sold at Christie’s. It came with a certificate by Roger Millant, author of the 1972 book J.B. Vuillaume: Sa Vie et son Oeuvre published by the Hill firm. The certificate, addressed to the bow maker and jeweller Henryk Kaston, states that in addition to the one being sold, there was a companion bow mounted in ivory and silver, which was illustrated in Millant’s book. Both bows also appear to be tributes to Paganini, the difference being that one of them is mounted in silver instead of gold.

There is another clue as to how and why the ‘Alard’-style bows were used. In 1847 Alard founded a chamber ensemble called the Société Alard et Franchomme. Its founding string quartet was made up of himself, violinist Jules Garcin, violist Charles Trombetta and cellist Auguste Franchomme. This was the era when musicians began to turn their attention to music from the past, and Alard’s initiative sparked new interest in the composers of the previous century.

It has been mentioned in various sources that Franchomme played with one of the ‘Alard’ Vuillaume cello bows. This cannot be proven, but it is certainly plausible given the quartet’s repertoire. Parisian musicians of the time could not have overlooked the fact that performers in Vienna were still using the ‘Biedermeier’ bow, essentially a heavier version of the Cramer-head bow – an open frog without a ferrule and, more often than not, mounted in ivory. Keeping this in mind, might it be that Vuillaume’s invention was meant as an encouragement to prominent Parisian musicians to keep up with the stylistic integrity adhered to in Vienna?

These ‘Alard’ violin and cello bows were always made in tandem with traditional bows. There is correspondence between Vuillaume and one of his clients wherein he bemoaned the fact that his production had all but stopped because of the Franco-Prussian War, known in France as the ‘War of 1870’. Based on this information we can estimate that, after the 1849 prototype, these bows were made in the Vuillaume workshop for the next 20 years. Other examples of ‘Alard’ bows are mounted in ebony and silver or nickel, including some by Dominique Peccatte, Pierre Simon, Nicolas Maline and Jean ‘Grand’ Adam. To my knowledge, the last ones were made by François Nicolas Voirin, who probably made the majority of the existing examples.

Since the bow makers who worked for Vuillaume did not sign their own productions, it is not easy to assign the name of a particular bow maker who worked for the Vuillaume shop. But it is interesting how small differences are apparent even though the frogs are basically the same, indicating that some degree of choice was left to the maker. The four examples shown here all come from the author’s personal collection.

EXAMPLE 3 This is the least problematic bow in terms of identification because one can find illustrations of identical bows in the literature. It is a typical early Voirin of the type he made during the period when he worked for Vuillaume. I would even go as far as to say he probably set the standard for this kind of bow. I have seen more Voirins made in this fashion than any other maker in the Vuillaume shop.

EXAMPLE 4 Top and centre This shows a frog that most likely came from a Stentor bow, as it does not have the Vuillaume-style seating and must have been made in the Peccatte shop. In this case, the frog shows the hand of François Peccatte. Bottom This traditional open frog shows again how Vuillaume’s invention is very different in both appearance and functionality.