The whole roster
Every piece on the site, in five sections
Twenty-seven pieces. The sections are the same five that sit in the menu; this page is the flat list behind them.
The Bow 6
The geometry, components and evolution of the modern pernambuco bow from pre-Tourte transitional forms to Tourte's settled proportions.
- Seventy-Five Centimetres, Sixty Grams, and Nobody Has Improved On It74 to 75 centimetres from button to tip, 58 to 64 grams. The figures came out of one Paris workshop and were never revised.
- Before the Camber: the Pre-Tourte Bow and the Transitional StickThe pre-Tourte stick curves away from the hair rather than towards it — the opposite of the modern camber.
- The Frog, the Ferrule and the EyeletThe ferrule spreads the hair into an even ribbon; without it the hank bunches at the frog.
- Horsehair, Rosin, and the Friction the Whole Thing Depends OnHair is a consumable and the stick is not. The cuticle scales that hold rosin wear flat with use.
- Octagonal or Round, and What the Difference Is WorthEight planed faces raise lateral stiffness — by less than two billets of the same wood differ from each other.
- What Changes When the Instrument Gets LargerShorter, heavier, and held two ways: the bass bow is the only one played both overhand and underhand.
Makers 7
The named bow makers — from Tourte and Dodd through Peccatte, Voirin and Sartory to the modern ateliers — and the competition record that documents them.
- Tourte's Proportions, and Why They Stopped Moving in 1785A watchmaker's son who worked by trial: lengths, weights and woods tested by players who could say what responded.
- John Dodd and Nicolas Maire: the English and French Lines at the Same MomentLondon and Mirecourt in the same decade. Attribution here rests on heads, frogs and the auction record.
- Dominique Peccatte and the School That Carried His NameThe broad head and muscular taper a school formed around, held inside Tourte's length and weight.
- Voirin to Sartory: What Shifted at the End of the Nineteenth CenturyVoirin's slender line, then Sartory's. Both shifts show in the head and the frog, not the dimensions.
- W. E. Hill & Sons and Hermann Richard Pfretzschner: the Workshop at ScaleA workshop bow carries a house stamp rather than a hand. Hill and Pfretzschner both worked at scale.
- The Makers Who Stayed Near the WoodThe tradition that grew up beside the supply, and that the European record has consistently underweighted.
- What the Violin Society of America Competitions Have DocumentedThe Violin Society of America results are a dated record of adjudicated work, not a ranking of makers.
The Record 5
CITES, IBAMA, the 2007 and 2022 listings, the paperwork a bow now travels with, and the institutions that hold the conservation and auction record.
- Appendix II in 2007, and What Changed in 2022Appendix II in 2007, a stricter listing at CoP19 in 2022. A finished bow now travels with documentation.
- What IBAMA Controls and How the Export Record WorksIBAMA controls extraction and export inside Brazil — the layer that sits beneath the treaty.
- The Documents That Cross the Border With the BowThe musical instrument certificate covers repeated crossings by one instrument rather than one shipment.
- Dated Prices: What the Auction Catalogues ShowCatalogues read here as attribution history: who was named, when, and on what evidence.
- Endangered on the Red List: What the IUCN Assessment SaysEndangered on the Red List. The assessment sets population decline against what is left of the forest.
Measurements 4
The material science of pernambuco — density, modulus of elasticity, damping — and what the published mechanical tests reveal about why no substitute has displaced it.
- Why This Particular Wood Does What No Other Wood DoesDensity, modulus and internal damping in one piece of wood. No substitute has matched the combination.
- Carbon Fibre: What the Tests Show, and What They Do NotComposite sticks copy the gross dimensions. The published tests agree on stiffness and part company on response.
- How a Bow Is Tested: the Published MethodsA dial gauge against a clamped stick: the method behind most of the numbers quoted about bows.
- After Ivory and Tortoiseshell: What the Frog Is Made From NowTortoiseshell inlay on a nineteenth-century frog — a material the trade can no longer legally work.
Collections 5
The named museum and institutional holdings — Phoenix, the Ashmolean, the Cité de la Musique — and the Atlantic Forest itself as the collection that matters most.
- What Is Left of the Forest the Wood Came Out OfThe forest survives as fragments in farmed land. The coastal belt held most of the pernambuco.
- The Dye That Named a CountryDyewood chips and the red they yield. The dye trade ran for 250 years before the bow trade began.
- Planting Back What the Trade Took: the Documented Replanting ProgrammesSeedling trays. Pernambuco takes decades to reach a size a bow stick can be cut from.
- The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix: What a Public Collection RecordsPhoenix holds bows in a public collection, catalogued and open to view, which a private holding is not.
- Oxford and Paris: Two Collections, Two Approaches to the Same ObjectTwo catalogues, two philosophies: the bow as art history, or as part of an instrument's working life.