THE SECOND TOURTE

The bows of François-Nicolas Voirin had more influence than those of any other bow maker after F.X. Tourte. In the first of two articles, Matt Wehling explores Voirin’s life and career, and examines why his bows were so successful with players

PHOTO COURTESY AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN

The reviews are in. ‘If ever there was a secret in the making of the stick, this is it,’ wrote long-time English bow maker William Retford. ‘The head, which is light and pleasing to look at, is slightly rounded and terminates in a point which can only be described as perfect,’ wrote Étienne Vatelot in his seminal bow book Les Archets Français (as exemplified by the bow head above). When you can get an octogenarian Englishman and an erudite Frenchman to agree on something, you know it’s worth looking into.

What they were referring to is the work of François-Nicolas Voirin, who would start life in provincial France and die tragically young at the height of his powers. Along the way he would redefine how the bow looks, plays, and sounds, becoming the second genius of bow making (he is often referred to as ‘The Second Tourte’). For 75 years after his death his work would be the dominant style in bow making.

Born in the small town of Mirecourt on 1 October 1833, François-Nicolas Voirin might have spent his entire life there, working in a violin or bow making workshop as so many of his playmates no doubt ended up doing. But early training, extremely talented hands, family connections and a quietly ambitious nature combined to make a man who would modernise the bow to fit the ever-changing needs of 19thcentury musicians.

The second oldest of four boys (all of whom went into the violin trade, the youngest two both conveniently having the first name of Joseph), it is thought that by the age of twelve François-Nicolas was apprenticed to Jean Simon. This is not Pierre Simon, the great maker of many fine bows who worked for Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume and then on his own for many years, but the Mirecourt journeyman whose bows were possibly signed ‘Simon FR’. Voirin’s brother Joseph, younger by three years, probably learnt with this master as well.

Around 1855 both of the young Voirins left for Paris, the elder to work in the leading shop of Vuillaume, while Joseph is thought to have worked elsewhere before setting up on his own account. Paris life didn’t work out well for Joseph, and in 1867 he went to manage the Gautrot firm in Chateau-Thierry, roughly 60 miles east of Paris. But life in the big city seemed to suit François-Nicolas much better.

A first cousin of the Voirin boys’ mother (well documented by Sylvette Milliot in her 2006 book on the maker), Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume was born in 1798 in Mirecourt, left for Paris just before his 20th birthday, and became the most renowned French violin maker and dealer of all time. Vuillaume (whom I will refer to as such, or by his initials JBV) was a generation older than François-Nicolas and probably felt that François-Nicolas had been entrusted to his care. In his 1972 book on Vuillaume, Roger Millant states that Voirin’s father had appointed JBV to be François-Nicolas’s guardian.

Voirin went to work with Vuillaume at the age of 22 (JBV would have been 57 at the time). Although Pierre Simon was not working in the Vuillaume shop at that time, Simon would have still been providing Vuillaume with bows. We can’t know if Voirin met Simon; he certainly would have seen many Simon bows and his style soon started to emulate that of Simon.

Simon had two styles of heads, one that was quite square and modelled after Dominique Peccatte (with whom he had worked for two years), and the other more rounded and personal. While at Vuillaume’s, it is the latter style in which Voirin worked (figure 1).

The young Voirin quickly progressed to making the best bows in the shop. He was given the special status of being paid by the piece rather than by the day. With this arrangement Voirin, who typically worked from 7am to 7pm with an hour for lunch, was able to earn better money. His speed and dexterity placed him in a comfortable enough position that by 1859 he was able to marry a young lace maker from Mirecourt, Anne-Thérèse Magnié. The wedding took place in their home town; she was 23, he was 26. As Sylvette Milliot wrote, ‘The career of the couple took them to Paris, in service to Jean-Baptiste. Anne-Thérèse traded her bobbins for a bow hair comb, which she used with great care.’ If she had started the precise work of lace making as early as François-Nicolas had started bow making, the change of métier would no doubt have been an easy one for her.

FIGURE 1A Simon had two styles, one very much modelled after Peccatte, the other softer and more rounded (top). Voirin’s style at Vuillaume follows the latter (bottom). In these examples we see a real similarity, although note that Simon’s chamfers have a bit more ‘swing’ to them, being smaller near the headplate and getting larger as they curve into the throat

FIGURE 1 PHOTOS ISAAC SALCHOW FOR SALCHOW AND SONS BOWMAKERS. CASE PHOTO JAY IFSHIN

FIGURE 1B Simon frog (top) compared to one made by Voirin while he was working at Vuillaume’s (bottom). Both are in the Vuillaume style of highly rounded frogs, mounted with a recess into the stick

An original F.N. Voirin bow case, with a selection of Voirin bows

Engraving of François-Nicolas Voirin dated 1884

Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume from around 1870

By the time of the marriage Voirin would have been the most trusted worker in JBV’s bow shop, responsible for making most of the higher end bows in exotic materials and the famed picture bows. His sureness and rapidity of execution would have been highly regarded. In addition, his quiet demeanour and leadership skills made him well liked and respected. As Michel Winthrop wrote in his article on Voirin in the French magazine L’Âme et La Corde: ‘Voirin was loved and esteemed by all, not only because he had so much talent but also because he was a man of great class. His refined, elegant, fine bows can only have been made in his image.’

Still, relations between the distant cousins were often rocky. According to Winthrop, the tension was usually over money, as Vuillaume was notoriously stingey. One time Voirin (with Vuillaume’s approval) tried to develop a system for roughing out sticks mechanically, which could have saved much time and therefore increased Vuillaume’s profit margin. However after two weeks the experiment was abandoned. Vuillaume wanted to pay Voirin only for the bows that Voirin had produced during the first week, and not for the time lost during the second. Such was the esteem in which his co-workers held Voirin that they banded together and threatened to break all the windows of the shop if Voirin wasn’t paid for the time he’d spent trying to develop the new system. It must have taken much courage on the part of his fellow employees to demand this, as they could easily have all been thrown out of work. In this case, Vuillaume gave in.

It is said that Vuillaume could both treat his employees quite poorly financially but be quite proud of them at the same time. In the 1867 Paris Exhibition programme, Voirin is listed as Vuillaume’s ‘collaborator’. The name François-Nicolas Voirin was probably known to bow connoisseurs before the exhibition, but being mentioned by name and the bronze medal he received at the exhibition would have raised his stature among the general population of musicians. This would help him when he left the employ of Vuillaume a little more than two years later.

On 1 January 1870 Voirin established his own business on the top floor of 3 rue du Bouloi, Paris. Upon entering Voirin’s apartment, one first came into the workspace, while the living space for him, his wife and three daughters was beyond. That he set up shop on the first of the year implies this was not done on impulse; he probably had given JBV some notice, and he had surely taken care to acquire good materials beforehand. It was a gamble, but clients would search him out soon enough.

He chose a location not far from where Vuillaume’s central Paris shop had been; Vuillaume had closed his retail operation and moved outside of the city centre in around 1868. That shop had been quite near the Louvre, and many other violin shops were located nearby. Voirin’s new shop was conveniently situated just around the corner from the well-known Gand and Bernardel Frères shop, to whom Voirin would occasionally supply bows. These would include particularly beautiful tortoiseshell bows with intricate ‘panier fleuri’ inlays.

Concerning the question of why Voirin left JBV’s employ, a better question might be: why did he stay for 15 years? Most bow makers seemed to work for Vuillaume for only a few years, though the better ones continued to supply Vuillaume with bows on an independent basis. Vuillaume seemed to have valued bows more than bow makers. ‘Bow work is cheaply paid and the workers play all sorts of tricks to avoid doing it,’ he wrote to a fellow dealer in 1874. That Voirin was already paid by the piece made him something of an independent supplier. The family ties and loyalty may also have been a strong motivator for him to stay; when Voirin arrived in Paris he lodged in Vuillaume’s chateau, and was listed as living there when he got married four years later.

But the work circumstances were probably declining for Voirin. When in the late 1860s Vuillaume closed his central Paris location to move operations out to his chateau, leaving the day-to-day grind of running a shop to concentrate on the more interesting production of instruments. By the 1860s one can see a general decline in the aesthetic quality of wood used in bows made at the Vuillaume shop. Isaac Salchow postulates that Vuillaume may have made a major purchase of wood decades before and had not stocked up since then. It is not inspiring for a bow maker to use less than beautiful wood, particularly on what should be showpiece bows such as those made in ivory or tortoiseshell with gold fittings. Additionally Voirin was being asked to make some bows of less than top quality. Perhaps the perfectionist Voirin wasn’t feeling challenged in his role and was looking to change that by setting up on his own.

FIGURE 2 Bow made by Voirin just after leaving Vuillaume’s shop, c.1871–2. The head is not as elegant as it will become, as if he has some ideas but is searching for his style, his model. It is stamped on the opposite side, as was done in the Vuillaume shop.

FIGURE 3 Silver and tortoiseshell bow c.1874 with the ‘panier fleuri’ inlay motifs

PHOTOS ISAAC SALCHOW FOR SALCHOW AND SONS BOWMAKERS

Shortly after he left Vuillaume in 1870, Voirin really began to change his bows. At first the bows aren’t much different; the one shown in figure 2 is early, probably from around 1871 or 1872.

But within a couple of years, Voirin’s personal style started to emerge, and a bow like the one in figure 3 appears. This has all the features of the new ‘feminine’ style, pretty much fully born, thrusting forth like Athena from the forehead of Zeus.

Where did the idea come for a bow so different from what was prevalent at the time? Before Tourte came up with his model of the very masculine ‘hatchet head’ bow around the turn into the 19th century, he was making bows that had similarities to the style Voirin would introduce. Figure 4 shows a Tourte bow from about 1790 (which was featured in an article in The Strad in February 2018). The model that Voirin came up with is very similar to this bow.

FIGURE 4 F.X. Tourte bow, c.1790, before Tourte developed his ‘hatchet head’ model. Note the similarity to Voirin’s mature style

FIGURE 5 Mature-period Voirin bow, with a very fine, very stylish head and classic, well-proportioned frog

ALL PHOTOS NATHAN TOLZMANN FOR KENNETH WARREN AND SON LTD

There was some overlap for the next couple of years as Voirin gradually perfected this head. Many of his best bows follow this pattern, as in figure 5, from a later period, and figure 6, with gold and tortoiseshell mounts.

In many ways, 1870 was the worst possible time to start a business. In late July the Franco–Prussian War began. By late September, Paris was under a literal siege that lasted until almost February 1871. Then came the extreme political unrest of the Paris Commune. While shorter than the Reign of Terror it would have been equally dangerous to some of Voirin’s well-heeled clientele. The Commune saw many of Voirin’s potential clients fleeing. One of the few of the potentially threatened class to stay in Paris was Vuillaume, who hid his best instruments in the safe of one of his sons-in-law, a lawyer. And yet despite this turmoil, by 1872 Voirin had enough demand to start taking on employees.

First Louis Thomassin (first cousin to the great bow maker Claude) was hired, and a few years later Joseph-Alfred Lamy (later known as Lamy père) joined the team. Lamy had been working outside Paris for the large Gautrot shop where Voirin’s younger brother Joseph was a manager. Lamy and Joseph seemed to have had a close relationship, with Joseph being a witness to the birth certificates of the four Lamy children born while the prolific Lamy was working there. One assumes Joseph brought the young Lamy to his elder brother’s notice. The collaboration between François-Nicolas and Lamy was said to be particularly harmonious and productive: it can be hard for experts to tell where the hand of one left off and the other began. It is also thought that Charles Husson fils worked with Voirin for some time, starting in 1875. In addition to these paid collaborators, Mme Voirin was very involved in the workshop preparing hair, putting on windings, making rosin, and probably many other workshop duties (as well as presumably running the household and raising their three daughters). Receipt forms of the shop promote that they ‘prepare hair hanks for bows with fixed frogs’. The fact that they featured this on stationery printed in the early 1870s shows Vuillaume’s so-called self-rehairing bows were still in substantial use after JBV shuttered his central Paris shop. Then, as now, good hair (or a good rehair) can drive foot traffic into a shop, and few in Paris would have had Mme Voirin’s skill and expertise in making hanks for the self-rehairing bows.

FIGURE 6 Amature-period Voirin bow, with Vuillaume-style gold and tortoiseshell frog

There are many examples of Voirin’s character being beyond reproach. Winthrop writes that Voirin would welcome friends in a stylish and generous, though not necessarily talkative, fashion. While at Vuillaume’s he would have been involved in training younger workers such as Charles Peccatte and J.J. Martin. Would Vuillaume have paid him extra to take time with these less experienced men? Perhaps not, given JBV’s reputation with money, but one can imagine Voirin helping them without any extra pay. In a June 1878 article in the French journal Le Ménestral concerning the 26 bows the Voirin team exhibited at that year’s Paris Exhibition (including all members of the quartet plus bass, some in the style of Tourte and Lupot II), the writer tells of Voirin being given offers ‘considerable in nature’ for many bows with the ‘express condition’ that the bows be unsigned. The (French) writer of the article goes out of his way to say these offers were from Englishmen. Given that Voirin took part in the exhibition in order to sell bows and get orders, we might think this business would be tempting, but he politely declined, saying he ‘owed his work to his country’.

Winthrop notes that Voirin’s relations with the English and the Hill family in particular were excellent, and that in 1878 Voirin was officially represented in England by Hill. This was possibly a result of that successful 1878 exhibition where Voirin was awarded a silver medal.

Voirin’s impeccable character and calm demeanour helped him guide and keep a stable team in place, not a skill possessed by every employer. His output through the years would include a very large percentage of gold and tortoiseshell bows, often highly (but tastefully) decorated, showing that he was making bows for a discerning and well-to-do crowd. According to Winthrop, in 1884 gold-mounted bows were priced at 90 francs, whereas silver ones were 25 francs. Gold and tortoiseshell bows fetched 140 francs.

At the time of that 1878 exhibition, things must have been rolling well. One wonders how many bows the Voirin team might be able to produce in a good week. The next large exhibition would be held seven years later in Antwerp. According to Winthrop, as they were preparing for this 1885 exhibition Eugène Gand of Gand and Bernardel Frères sent a messenger to ask Voirin to come to his shop and show Gand the bows that François-Nicolas had prepared for the exhibition.

VOIRIN’S GOLD-MOUNTED BOWS WERE PRICED AT 90 FRANCS, WHEREAS SILVER ONES WERE 25 FRANCS

An 1881 receipt from Voirin to the luthier Marius Richelme of Marseille

RECEIPT COURTESY OF TARISIO AUCTIONS

Though probably quite stressed from the intense work of preparing for the exhibition, Voirin was flattered to be asked and at the end of the day packed some bows in thick paper and set off for the short walk to Gand’s shop. On the way he had a stroke and passed away that night, 4 June 1885, aged 51. At the Universal Exhibition in Antwerp he was posthumously awarded a gold medal.

Finding herself without a husband and with three daughters, Mme Voirin pressed on. Joseph Alfred Lamy quickly started out on his own, but Louis Thomassin continued to work for her for five more years, producing bows that would be stamped with the ‘F.N.VOIRIN A PARIS’ stamp, but which are not of the quality of those made by the master. This turn of events may give us some insight into Mme Voirin’s role in the shop – if she was able to continue the business while offering what everyone knew was an inferior product, this might imply that she had quite a large role in the Voirin business for some time.

François-Nicolas Voirin died at the height of his powers. In the 15 years that he guided a small, hard-working crew they would have produced thousands of the highest-quality bows, and there’s little reason to believe they couldn’t have gone on for another 15 years.

The main criticism of Voirin bows is that there are a large number of them out there that are too light for modern playing. There seems to have been a market of musicians who wanted a light, agile bow for parts of their repertoire. ‘Numbers were imported into England and supplied to wealthy amateurs to whom they provided satisfaction,’ wrote William Retford in 1964. ‘These bows were useless to the expert player today, and we may assume they were so when made.’ Maybe, maybe not. There have been examples of modern-day dealers finding old violin outfits, and the cases included two bows, one of which we would now call standard weight, one lighter. The different bows would have had their uses with different repertoire and venues. These bows aren’t cheaper, lower-grade bows; figure 7 shows an example of a very finely crafted bow that weighs in at 53 grams.

TOURTE BOWS TEND TO BE BALANCED MORE TOWARDS THE HEAD OF THE BOW, THE VOIRINS MORE TOWARDS THE FROG

There are many Tourte bows that were also quite light. One difference between a light Tourte and a light Voirin is that Tourte bows tend to be balanced more towards the head of the bow, the Voirins more towards the frog. This has two ramifications. First, it makes the lighter Voirin bow feel even more so because the head feels so light. Second, a modern dealer can load up a lighter Tourte bow with a very heavy, very unoriginal metal winding. This brings the bow up to a weight modern players are looking for, but the balance point is not overly close to the frog. Doing this to a lighter Voirin bow would bring its balance point even closer to the frog, making it feel even lighter.

Voirin quickly became one of the most trusted of Vuillaume’s employees and was able to make top-level bows. This one, mounted in gold and tortoiseshell, has one of the famous ‘picture bow’ frogs, containing a tiny photograph of Vuillaume in the eye. Note how similar the head is to the Simon and Vuillaumeperiod Voirin bows in figure 1A.

FIGURE 7 PHOTOS ALEX DUMITRACHE FOR IFSHIN VIOLINS. PICTURE BOW PHOTOS NATHAN TOLZMANN FOR KENNETH WARREN AND SON LTD

FIGURE 7 Alighter, but very well-made, later-period Voirin bow of 53 grams. To quote Retford in regards to octagonal bows made by Voirin, ‘It is a free-hand product, surpassing anything previously made.’

One reason the Voirin bow is balanced closer to the frog than earlier bows is that as music, venues, violin set-up (including strings, neck length and angle, etc.) and the world in general changed, musicians changed as well. In particular, musicians began to grip the bow further down so that their thumb was right on the frog. When earlier musicians gripped the bow further up the stick, a bow that today would seem a little head-heavy would have felt ‘just right’. Voirin was always responding to the feedback and needs of his clientele, and changing his bows accordingly.

Musicians were also pleased with changes Voirin made to the curve of the bow and to the manner in which the bow goes from the thinnest part behind the head to the thickest part right at the grip. The exact technical details of these changes are beyond the scope of this article (and will be covered in detail in an upcoming issue of The Strad ), but in general the manner in which the Voirin stick becomes thicker happens quicker than with an earlier Tourte-model bow (generally, the Voirin progression is more logarithmic in nature and the Tourte is more linear). The Voirin bow often reaches its thickest part at about the midpoint of the bow, and then continues with about the same diameter to the grip. A Tourte-influenced bow will often have its largest diameter near the frog. In addition, the form of the curve of the bow, known as the camber, drastically changed. With the earlier bows, the camber was centred in the middle third of the bow. Voirin moved the concentration of camber out towards the head of the bow (figure 8).

Both of these changes, combined with widening the frog to make the band of hair wider and making the frog less tall, made a bow that is much more stable and controllable to play. The post-Voirin bow is more nimble and acrobatic.

While the Voirin bow became easier to play, it did lose something in the trade: earlier Tourte-style bows are seen to have an immediately great sound. This is countered by the musician needing to adapt their technique to the idiosyncrasies of the bow. ‘Once you learn how the older bow wants to be played, it’s a great partnership,’ says Chicago Symphony Orchestra cellist and bow vivant Brant Taylor. ‘Then your technique adapts to the greatness of the bow.’ He goes on to say that great bows by Voirin and his followers such as Lamy and Sartory, ‘are more adaptable, more immediately appealing to a wider range of players’. He says that with the Tourte-style bow the musicians may need to change their technique more to learn how to manipulate the bow through some passages, whereas with a Voirin-style bow the musician can often use more straightforward technique to get the most out of that bow.

FIGURE 8 Top In bows previous to those made by Voirin, the curve (camber) is centred in the middle third of the bow Above Voirin moved the camber so that it is concentrated in the third of the bow closest to the head

FIGURE 8 IMAGES MATT WEHLING

There are those that say a great Tourte bow is better, that the skilful player will eventually learn to control the bow and enjoy its great sound. Others say that bows by Voirin (and his followers such as Lamy and Sartory) allow players to utilise their skills to get the sound they want while having the comfort of dependable playability all the way from frog to tip. A Voirin bow ‘always has a great comfort in its playing’, says Belgian-based bow maker and expert Pierre Guillaume. ‘Everybody likes this.’ The point isn’t that one is better than the other, but that they’re different: both types have their uses and places where they will be the more appropriate bow for the player and circumstance.

The Voirin-style bow became the standard, particularly for orchestral playing where working in an ensemble is the priority. Fans of Voirin bows say that the best Voirins have an added sparkle to their tone. This would have been particularly important before the advent of steel strings. The added acrobatic playability would have been a great boon to sound production on instruments with the lower-tension gut strings. It is often noted that Voirin is one of the very few makers whose work got more delicate at the end of his career. But it should be noted that his oeuvre had the unfortunate advantage that Voirin was struck down at the height of his powers, and we did not have the chance to see his eyes and hand skills diminish as he aged.

WITH THEIR NEW LOOK AND FEEL, VOIRIN’S BOWS WERE IMMEDIATELY HUGELY INFLUENTIAL, AND THAT INFLUENCE CONTINUED WELL INTO THE MID-20TH CENTURY

Voirin’s bows, with their new look and feel, were immediately hugely influential, and that influence continued well into the mid-20th century. While the most well-known disciples would be the Lamy family, Sartory, the Fétiques, Émile-Auguste Ouchard, Claude Thomassin, Morizot, etc., most of the Mirecourt workshops were also working in his style. Voirin’s later period ended just as the rise of the small cottageindustry shops such as the Bazin atelier began. These shops would have seen that Voirin was successful, his client list was impressive, and they would have followed. At one point the C.N. Bazin shop was offering a bow modelled after the lighter Voirin bows with fittings made of aluminium to replicate the light weight of those models, showing once again that there was a consumer desire for that type of bow (this according to Yannick Le Canu, an author of the recent biography of the Bazin family, who also said Bazin owned a ‘F.N. VOIRIN A PARIS’ stamp, very close to Voirin’s original). A 1927 catalogue from the large firm Laberte et Magnié offers artist quality bows ‘Signed by Marc Laberte, very beautiful copies of Voirin and Tourte the younger, after the originals’. But it wasn’t just these speciality bows being offered: a very large proportion of the French factory bows until the mid-20th century stylistically looked like a Voirin-style bow, though they weren’t at all comparable in quality.

In the 1950s, French bow making styles would swing away from Voirin back towards a previous era. In Paris, cousins Jean-Jacques and Bernard Millant, as well as Bernard Ouchard in Geneva, would draw from times before Voirin for their inspiration. In the 1980s students of the modern French bow making school who had learnt from Bernard Ouchard developed their own personal styles, some similar to Voirin, others more inspired by earlier makers such as Grand Adam, Pajeot, and, of course, F.X. Tourte. It always comes back to Tourte – either the first, the originator of the modern bow, François Xavier, but also often to the man sometimes referred to as ‘the second Tourte’, François-Nicolas Voirin. An upcoming article will show how he changed the form, function and sound of his bows, and how influential that was for the bows that followed.

Information has been gleaned from the books mentioned in the text as well as L’Archet by Millant/Raffin/Le Canu, and interviews with Yung Chin, Pierre Guillaume, Ben Hebbert, Philip J. Kass, Jeemin Kim, Markus Laine, Yannick Le Canu, Jason Price, Isaac Salchow, Brant Taylor, L’Atelier d’Arthur, Kenneth Warren and Son and others