Violin Bow: Early Baroque by A Dipper w/ Ratchet Mechanism

September 27, 2022 by Sherry

Violin Bow: Early Baroque by A Dipper w/ Ratchet Mechanism

This bow represents the sequel to the “clip-in-frog” early bow. The ratchet with its hoop allows the tension of the bow hair to be finely adjusted as the weather becomes more humid, and also prevents the bow frog from coming out or being lost if the hair becomes too damp. This style of bow was used in 19th century and it retained the length of the early baroque bow of approximately 67cm or 26 inches with a weight between 45 and 55 grams. It is difficult to trace the history of the crémaillère bow because there are so few existing examples and they rarely appear in paintings or drawings. An early example is illustrated in a painting, dated 1713 called ‘The Allegory of the Arts’ by Jean Baptiste Oudry. $2,800.

Violin Bow: Early Baroque by A Dipper w/ Ratchet Mechanism – DVB313 (price $2,800)

Violin Bow: Baroque, A. Dipper, Stradivari Model

September 27, 2022 by Givens Violins

Violin Bow: Baroque, A. Dipper, Stradivari Model

Two examples of the bows of from the Stradivari period (1680-1740) are known and they both have screw mechanisms for their adjustment, dating them after circa 1710. Andrew Dipper make his Stradivari pattern bows according to the characteristics of the extant examples. The sticks are longer at 68cm than usual for the period 1720-40 and the heads are higher. Stradivari bows are made from snakewood and are fine and agile in design and dimensions. They can be cannulated as in early examples or can be simple round sticks. They generally weigh between 52-56 grams. There is a reasonable possibility that the development of the violin bow away from the short and stiff Corelli bow took place in Cremona in the period 1720-30 and was engendered by the influence and performance requirements of the two virtuosos Tartini & Gasparo Visconti.

Violin Bow: Baroque, A. Dipper, Stradivari Model – DVB259 (price $3,200)

Violin Bow: Classical, A. Dipper, Dodd model

September 27, 2022 by Givens Violins

Violin Bow: Classical, A. Dipper, Dodd model

The Dodd family produced some of the finest English bows of the 18th and 19th centuries. The models tend to be influenced by the designs of other bow making schools, in particular the Mannheim school that is associated with the career of the violinist Wilhelm Cramer and other models being influenced by the Italo-French school of Viotti. The use of British colonial woods rather than South American woods in their construction is an interesting factor in their design which led to measurements that mostly exceed their French model counterparts. This more robust quality followed the requirement for more volume and dynamic power in the English orchestral style.

Violin Bow: Classical, A. Dipper, Dodd model– DVB301 (price $3,200)

Violin bow: Classical, A. Dipper, FX Tourte, Cramer model

September 27, 2022 by Givens Violins

Violin bow: Classical, A. Dipper, FX Tourte, Cramer model

The Cramer bow is distinctive because of its ‘battle axe’ head profile. It supplanted the Italian model of Tartini, whose design was typified by a somewhat awkward and rather fragile swan head with a long tip. The Cramer bow was designed for volume dynamics and percussive attack techniques of large ensembles, techniques that might have compromised the somewhat weaker and elevated heads of the previous Tartini models. It was promoted and in fashion between 1760-1785 notably in Manheim where Wilhelm Cramer spent the early portion of his career, and in London where Cramer emigrated in 1772.

The Cramer model bow is longer than most Italian models, measuring around 70-71 cm but is shorter than the modern standard length of around 74.5cm. The bows typically weigh less than the modern standard, being in the 50-57 gram range. A notable characteristic of the Cramer model is the specially shaped head whose design incorporates a thin palette of wood that extends the back of the tip plate towards the bow frog, giving the design its familiar battle axe profile. This detail lends strength to the back of the head behind the hair mortise and players have noted that this feature aids immediacy of the response to the bow in spiccato strokes. To learn more about the FX Tourte model visit Dipper blog.

Violin bow: Classical, A. Dipper, FX Tourte, Cramer model– DVB319 (price $3,200)

Violin Bow: Baroque- Imported- Snakewood

September 27, 2022 by Givens Violins

Violin Bow: Baroque- Imported- Snakewood

Dipper Restorations offers entry level violin, viola and cello baroque bows, made to his specifications in China. All bows are hand selected and adjusted by Andrew Dipper. These bows are crafted with first-rate snakewood and are specially selected for good workmanship and materials. These bows can be traded for higher level bows. (100% trade-in policy)

Violin Bow: Baroque- Imported- Snakewood – DVB292 (price $475.00)

Violin Bow: Baroque, A. Dipper, Corette Model

September 27, 2022 by Givens Violins

Violin Bow: Baroque, A. Dipper, Corette Model

The Corrette bow:

Michel Corrette (b. 1707, d.1795) was a French musician and author of many musical method books. Andrew Dipper’s bows are of the type illustrated by Corrette in his violin tutor. This tutor depicts a bow with a so-called swan head which is an adaptation of the lower Pike-Head type of the Corelli bow This medium sized bow head allows for a hair ribbon barely wider than 7mm. The hair ribbon is also cambered by the shaping of the frog’s hair channel, which gives the bow very different playing characteristics than the modern bow with its flat hair ribbon. The Hill collection at the Ashmolean Museum, in Oxford, England has examples of this kind of bow. The weight range of the Corrette bow is from 52-54 grams and its frog is adjustable by means of the usual screw and button. The stick of the bow is regulated in diameter to enhance poetical expression within the music. The frogs on Dipper modern reproductions of these bows are usually made from amourette wood or various other hard and heavy tropical hardwoods because of the necessity for strength and the fine and accurate shaping of their geometry.

In the mid-1700’s, in order to achieve better expression in virtuosic performance, bows were lengthened from the 60cm length of the ordinary Corelli bow to around 68cm. The bows were finely regulated in thickness and more flexible than their predecessors. High quality snakewood (Brosimum guianense) from French and Dutch Guiana became the material of choice for French bows. Stick profiles could by completely cylindrical in the Italian style or octagonal at the frog end, slowly achieving a cylindrical profile before the balance point of the stick. Some high-quality bows were also cannulated. The Dipper Corrette model bow demonstrates this mid-1700’s shift.

Violin Bow: Baroque, A. Dipper, Corrette Model– DVB307 – (price $2,900)

Violin Bow: Classical, A. Dipper, Paganini Model, inlay

September 27, 2022 by Givens Violins

Violin Bow: Classical, A. Dipper, Paganini Model, inlay

This classical violin bow celebrates the early career of Niccolo Paganini. Andrew Dipper carved it from dark brown snakewood. The frog is in snakewood inlaid with French silver escutcheons on either side, picturing The Papal Order of The Golden Spur, awarded to Mozart in 1770 and Niccolò Paganini in 1827. The pierced escutcheons are detailed with snakewood fill and gold, inset with two 2.1 mm rose cut diamonds on the vase that supports the order. The octagonal divided button is in French silver and snakewood with a mother of pearl circular eye. Tip plate is of black buffalo horn. Lapping is black snakeskin. Length 71 cm. Weight 60.04 gms

Violin Bow: Classical, A. Dipper, Paganini Model, inlay – DVB340 – (price: $5,800.00)

Violin bow: Baroque, A. Dipper, P. Tourte model

September 22, 2022 by Sherry

Violin bow: Baroque, A. Dipper, P. Tourte model

Pierre Tourte (b.c.1700, d.1764) was the father of the great Parisian bow maker Francois Tourte (1747-1835). It was Francois who worked assiduously to improve the techniques of bow making and explore the nature of the many rare tropical hardwoods being imported into Paris from the French holdings of the West Indies and South America. The new bow designed by Pierre Tourte with it higher “Swan Head” and longer stick proved to be the perfect tool to enable musicians to adapt and explore the musical inventions of Corelli and bring them to an eager and wider audience. The development of the Swan Head bow was a leap of faith from the point of view of design engineering and it used the properties of durability of the new range of woods that were being imported into France from the Americas. To learn more about the P. Tourte model visit the Dipper blog.

Violin bow: Baroque, A. Dipper, Tourte model – DVB324 (price $3,200.00)

Dear Mr. Puppy, Was there an April fools day in 18th century Paris?

April 23, 2021 by Sherry

Dear Mr. Puppy,

Was there an April fools day in 18th century Paris?

I have never taken a liking to Pierre Nicolas Housset, he is too much of Parisian in his mannerisms for a South Italian’s sentiment. He is insufferable as a musician and believes that the time he spent with the great Tartini in Padua gave him carte blanche to be an expert on the subject of expression and harmony. Tartini predicted that he would become “The Terror of Violins”, which in these troubled times has certainly taken on a disagreeable meaning. last April, After Lent, Housset and some of the others in the orchestra cooked up something odious for me. During rehearsals for an Italian production with the director of the company. Monsieur Viotti as conductor, M. La Houssaye leader of the French band just ‘happened’ to present himself. Housset continually whined that he spent five years in Padua with Tartini at the “Scuola Delle Nazioni”. Actually, he took a few lessons from him in 1753 when he traveled in the entourage of his employer the Prince of Monaco, and repeated these a few years later. He was certainly an enthusiast of Tartini’s method of violin playing, but five years of continual study was an overstatement. Viotti, whom I now suspect was party to the whole enterprise, begged Housset, as a ‘favor’, to perform a specimen of the Master’s manner of playing for the edification of the whole group. When he had finished this charade, Viotti pronounced, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the whole orchestra. Now, Signor Puppo, now that you have listened to my friend, Monsieur La Houssaye, you will be able to form an idea as to how Tartini actually played!”I certainly regret the whole affair, which was initiated by my publisher Monsieur Porro, trying to pump up sales and inserting an advertisement into the Paris Gazette that cast me too grandly as an actual pupil of Tartini. I certainly did not need to become a Tartini acolyte to appreciate or be capable of the finesses of his style, and in any case, it is a style wholly unfit for the new compositions of an Italian Opera orchestra, that must play to the rowdy behavior of the whole house and needs collaboration and power to be effective.

*”Ask Mr. Puppy” aka Giuseppe Puppo, an 18th-century concert violinist, answers our questions about his career and times.

Dear Mr. Puppy, I hear the 18th century was a very transitional time for bowmakers. Can you tell me what that was like?- Part IV

April 17, 2021 by Sherry

Dear Mr. Puppy,
I hear the 18th century was a very transitional time for bowmakers. Can you tell me what that was like? Part IV of IV:

The Tourte family you might recall invented the metal ferrell that holds the hair in a fine ribbon at the nose of the frog, this replaced the previous solution, a slip of card that was held in place by an ingenious binding of very thin gut cord held firm by a small extra little nose over the hair channel. The first experiment they made used a band of pewter, but that proved to be unreliable as it stretched in time, from thence they fixed on silver as the answer. Francois Xavier had served a part of an apprenticeship in mechanics and knew the delicate task of soldering the metal with a blow-pipe flame and charcoal. Their bows became the standard of excellence for all the best players; in the same way that the Neapolitan Angelucci brand chanterelle strings, for the violin, were the only strings that one could use to concertize. The cheap Mittenwald copies of the string would barely last through three pages of the score.

One thing that I still find extraordinary is that Old Tourte was a man without classical education and unable to read or to write to any extent, yet he was able, only by the power of intellect to perceive how to work up the forces of resistance and pliability in the bow stick by the capacity of his hand and eye, to such a fine degree that his work is superior to all other bow-makers. Why even the young citizen cellist Duport declares his Tourte bow to be equal in art and response to his Stradivari cello.

*“Ask Mr. Puppy” aka Giuseppe Puppo, an 18th-century concert violinist, answers our questions about his career and times.

Dear Mr. Puppy, I hear the 18th century was a very transitional time for bowmakers. Can you tell me what that was like?- Part III

April 7, 2021 by Sherry

Dear Mr. Puppy,

I hear the 18th century was a very transitional time for bowmakers. Can you tell me what that was like?

Part III of IV:

To draw a good sound with thicker strings the makers made the bow heavier and longer. Sometimes up to 74cm including the button. My old standard concerto bow was 68cm with a weight of around 55 grams. The inward curve or camber of the new bows made it essential to increase the height of the head of the bow and this created many problems for the strength and balance of the bow, A thing that many bow makers in France and the German States struggled with as the new pernambuco wood, unlike snakewood was apt to fail and the heads crack in cold weather. Old Mr. Cramer required his pupils to use the so-called hatchet head bow whose strange form gave extra strength to the tip mortice for those mass barrages of sound of the music that he preferred. The Tourte family made these kinds of bows for the Court musicians, all tarted up with ivory to match the musician’s white make-up powdered wigs and silk embroidered band uniforms, The Germans and English made heavier versions for use in the Opera di Musica and large festival bands. I preferred my old plain Scottish snakewood and ivory bow that I purchased in Edinburgh, it was perfect for playing the repertoire of my friend Mr. Haydn.

*”Ask Mr. Puppy” aka Giuseppe Puppo, an 18th-century concert violinist, answers our questions about his career and times.

Dear Mr. Puppy, I hear the 18th century was a very transitional time for bowmakers. Can you tell me what that was like?- Part II

April 1, 2021 by Sherry

Dear Mr. Puppy,

I hear the 18th century was a very transitional time for bowmakers. Can you tell me what that was like?

Part II of IV:

My friend Gaviniès once told me that the bowmakers found a small source in the staves from sugar barrels. It seems that the manufacturers in Brazil and the Antilles used the wood because it was heavy and protected the refined block sugar from the fierce attacks by tropical ants in that country. These creatures would sometimes carry away a whole month’s production in a night. The shippers liked the heavier wood, as the sugar was sold by the total weight, barrel, included. Sometimes this wood was really superior for the trades and was prized by the cabinet makers for case coverings of their royal commissions. Old Citizen Tourte kept the best pieces of bow wood for himself and sold the lesser pieces to the other bow makers and became somewhat of a savvy merchant in his declining years. Tourte bows were extremely expensive and cost 12 Louis d’or if they were tortoiseshell with gold mounts, or 3 ½ Louis if they were ebony and silver. The price of ordinary bows at this time of the Revolution was around 1 ¾ Louis. The Tourte bows became somewhat of a joke amongst the musicians of Paris because the orders took such a long time to complete and they would quip to those who had invested such a large sum “I hope it is not torte, twisted, by the time it arrives.”

*Ask Mr. Puppy” aka Giuseppe Puppo, an 18th-century concert violinist, answers our questions about his career and times. Can you find Mr. Puppy in the painting?