Dominique Peccatte

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dominique Peccatte stamp

Dominique Peccatte (1810-1874) was an influential French violin and bow maker ^[1]. He was apprenticed in Mirecourt and later worked with Jean Baptiste Vuillaume. He is notable for inventing the "hatchet-shaped" bow head and is considered to be one of the most influential bow makers. His brother François Peccatte and nephew Charles Peccatte (son of Francois) were also notable bow-makers.

[edit] Biography

Apprenticed to a violin maker in Mirecourt, Peccatte soon worked in the workshop of Jean Baptiste Vuillaume, from 1826 to 1837. Here he studied with Persois, and also met Tourte. Like Voirin his early bows were sometimes stamped with the name of Vuillaume. By 1837 he had taken over the workshop of Lupot. He returned to Mirecourt in 1847.

He seldom used a stamp mark, making his bows hard to distinguish. Some consider his bows second only to those of Tourte. His brother, François (1820 - 1855) was also a bow maker who worked in Mirecourt.

As Stefan Hersh wrote about Peccatte'a work and life, "Dominique Peccatte, (who is presumed to have learned his craft with Persoit, and apparently worked in the Lupot atelier as well, before a stint in the Vuillaume workshop) continued the trend with a bow patterned after Tourte’s strongest, heaviest model. The Peccatte concept for a bow was generally heavier than anything before him in France, and his output was vast and consistent. If not as flexible as earlier bows, Peccatte bows are still normally fairly flexible; the increase in weight from earlier concepts makes Peccatte bows well suited to the production of the volume of sound and degree of articulation appropriate to large, modern concert halls. The Peccatte bow is one (but not the only) ideal compromise in terms of tone production and handling. Although it neither produces the beauty of tone of a Tourte, nor handles with the nimbleness of a Nicolas Kittel, a fine Peccatte does everything it must do very well, and with a thick rich sonority. Peccatte’s two most well known pupils were Joseph Henry and Pierre Simon."