Etienne Pajeot Violin Bow, Mirecourt circa 1820

This is an unusually well preserved and branded Etienne Pajeot violin bow – it’s also a very fine playing bow with a great combination of clarity and depth of tone

Pajeot is one of the true revolutionaries of French bowmaking – surely no-one else evolved so rapidly in the course of their working life. All the more remarkable that this evolution happened in Mirecourt, not in Paris.

Etienne Pajeot started out very much as the apprentice or shadow of his father Louis Simon Pajeot, a talented maker with a bold style particular gift for decoration. Etienne found a way of marrying this visual flair with a real understanding of the needs of the musicians of the day. By 1840 he had arrived at a model and a level of accomplishment that most modern bowmakers would be pleased to reach.

This beautiful bow is from Pajeot’s first period as an independent maker. It stands out for the quality of the wood, the perfection in its finish, and the unique head shape, in which we can see the first hints of the classic Pajeot “racing” head.

The stick is of wild grained olive-brown round section pernambuco – mounts are silver and ebony with a half-mounted frog without underslide.

The condition of the bow is excellent – there are no defects, and nothing worth noting beyond a small amount of chipping along the top edge of the frog, audience side.

This is a remarkable sounding bow which has many of the attributes of a fine Tourte – clarity, brilliance and nobility. Quite a supple stick but with a lively spring and a controllable bounce – very satisfying across the spectrum, with a warm and vibrant core and a rich, silvery top end.

There’s a lot of debate about the relative merits of wood to wood mounts, and many great players will only use this type of bow – the underslide was invented as a way to prevent chipping in the ebony, but it doesn’t really help the sound. For me this bow makes a powerful case in defence of the proposition – it allows a harmonic complexity which just can’t be found in more modern models, the sound is free and open, and the fingers of the bowing hand feel fully connected to that sound.