Jean Joseph Martin

Life and Career

Jean Joseph Martin was the son of Claude Louis Martin (1811–1854) and Anne Cunisset (1811–1900). His father worked in one of the countless violin-making workshops in Mirecourt. The town was the cradle of the great French tradition of violin making and bow making. Most of the great French makers were born there or had received their training there.

Jean Joseph’s father died when he was seventeen. After his father’s death, his mother never remarried, and Jean supported the family with what he earned. It was more or less a given that Jean would be trained in one of the workshops in Mirecourt. It is impossible to determine which one that was. He does not appear on any payroll records, nor do his earliest works unequivocally point to any particular workshop. From the age of 12—the year when apprentices typically began their training—until he was 21, he developed his skills to such an extent that he was hired that year by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume (1798–1875) in Paris. In Mirecourt, poverty among bow makers was often severe, and Paris, with its population of 1.5 million, offered ambitious craftsmen better prospects. He didn’t have the money to pay for the stagecoach to Paris, so he covered the 350-kilometer distance on foot in just under two weeks.

In the year that Jean Joseph Martin began working for Jean Baptiste Vuillaume, Vuillaume’s firm had grown—in just ten years—into a company with two locations that produced about 250 instruments and 1,000 bows per year. Unlike other workshops, where mass production often led to inferior results, Vuillaume’s workshop produced excellent bows and stringed instruments. A strict regime prevailed in Vuillaume’s workshop, where only the best was good enough. Countless great bow makers and violin makers worked for him. Vuillaume often challenged his employees to experiment. It was not uncommon for him to later claim their discoveries as his own, though he did reward them with promotions.

There, Jean Joseph Martin met François Nicolas Voirin (1833–1885), who played an important role at Vuillaume, and Nicolas Maire (1800–1878), with whom he became friends. Jean Joseph soon became one of the leading bow makers in Vuillaume’s workshop. According to experts, his Vuillaume-model bows are among the best ever made for the company.

While at Vuillaume’s, he also met George Mougenot (1843–1937). Like Jean Joseph, George was from Mirecourt and came from a prominent family of violin makers. He married George’s daughter, Rose, in 1863 after returning to Mirecourt. That same year, they had a son, Louis Auguste, whom he would later train in the craft.

In Mirecourt, Jean Joseph Martin started his own workshop with the support of his in-laws. There, together with a few employees, he produced 144 bows per month around 1870. However, that did not last long. To help other violin makers cope with the ever-increasing competition, Jean Joseph founded the “Union Ouvrière” in Mirecourt, a cooperative in which several firms and about 10 individual craftsmen participated. These included Arthur Joseph Vigneron, Delunet, and the Langonet father and son. A photograph from 1880 shows how they worked together in Martin’s workshop. Jean Joseph led the group. He had the Union officially registered, had impressive stationery printed, and together they sold their instruments, bows, and accessories. The Union supplied not only private customers but also other businesses, such as the large workshop of Jérôme Thibouville-Lamy. When J.T.L. wanted to set up a new department for making bows, Jean Joseph Martin helped him do so. He probably did not realize that, partly as a result of this, J.T.L. would become one of his biggest competitors.

However, the experiment failed. After five years, in 1880, the Union was on the verge of bankruptcy. And because Martin was held responsible for this, the bankruptcy hit him personally. He asked George Chanot (1831–1895) in Paris to offer his son a position in his studio, and for the others, he sought a solution to the problems that had arisen. He himself had to leave his home. He was 44, but the debacle had apparently affected him so deeply that he never really recovered. Although he lived in poverty from that point on, he continued to make bows until he was 73.

Regardless of the changing circumstances in which Jean Joseph found himself, he made a large number of good to very good bows, which are still highly regarded today.

Work and Influence

In the mid-nineteenth century, Peccatte’s model of bow was still the most common. These were powerful, robust bows. Jean Joseph Martin often made such bows in his early career. Influenced by changing musical practices, a demand arose for more elegant, supple, and slimmer bows. Starting with his time at Vuillaume in Paris, he devoted himself entirely to a new design that Vuillaume had developed—elegant, light, and with rounded edges on the ferrule. He would go on to make many hundreds of them.

Even after he returned to Mirecourt, he continued to make them there. For the rest of his life, this model would constitute by far the largest part of his body of work. For the ferrule, he used tortoiseshell in addition to the customary ebony. Virtually all of the bows feature silver fittings. He sometimes had the silver slide on the bows he made for Emile Mennesson engraved with floral motifs. These bows were stamped with the fictitious name J. Guarini. He himself stamped his bows with J. Martin.

He made bows for John and Arthur Beare, Joseph Hel, Carolus Henry, Emile Mennesson, the widow of François Nicolas Voirin, and Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume.

The bow that the Musical Instrument Fund has in its collection, made by him, is stamped with the name F.N. Voirin. He made it during the period when he worked as a small-scale independent craftsman, offering his services to other workshops. It is presumably one of the so-called “widow” bows. After François Nicolas Voirin died in 1885, his widow continued the business for another seven years. During that time, other bow makers, including Martin, produced work for her.

Sources

Millant, B., Raffin, J.F., 2000, *L'Archet: French Bowmakers, 1750–1950*. Paris.

Vatelot, E., 1976, *Les Archets Français*, Nancy.

Haine, M., 2013, “Trademarks for Musical Instrument Components Registered with the Paris Commercial Court Registry.” zp.

Tarisio, Cozio, Digital Archive, accessed 2020.

Childs P., 1986, The bow makers of the Peccatte family, New York.

Geneanet, accessed in 2020.

Archives Nationales de France, accessed in 2020.

Mesdemarches.culture.france, accessed in 2020.