François Peccatte

Life Story

François Peccatte was the youngest son of Jean François Peccatte, a barber and wigmaker, and Anne Chambry. They lived in Mirecourt, where for years most French violin makers and bow makers had received their training; some stayed there, but many others eventually left. His father owned two vineyards that he had inherited from his first wife, to whom he had been married for twenty years. That inheritance had made him a man of means. He desperately needed the income from the grape harvest to support the nine children from their marriage. In 1809, a year after her death, he married Anne Chambry. The first child from this marriage was Dominique. Eleven years later, François was born; he was the sixth and last child in the family. In addition to his own five brothers and sisters, the youngest children from his father’s previous marriage also lived with them.

When he was about eleven years old, François became an apprentice bow maker at one of the many workshops in Mirecourt. He continued to work there even after completing his training, until his brother Dominique—eleven years his senior—asked him to come to Paris in 1839. Dominique, a brilliant bow maker, had worked for many years with Jean Baptiste Vuillaume and, for the previous year and a half, with François Lupot. After Lupot’s death in 1838, he had taken over his business. This was a great honor, as Lupot was regarded as one of the foremost bow makers in Paris. He not only took over the workshop but, according to the archives, also Lupot’s home.

Once in Paris, François moved in with Dominique, and together they made a number of bows. Lupot’s former shop was a central gathering place for colleagues, and that likely did not change under Dominique’s leadership. There, François met the “best bow makers imaginable” and collaborated with many of them, as he wrote in a letter from 1844 to the prefect of the Vosges.

François returned to Mirecourt in 1842 so that he could marry Marie Françoise Mougeot there. The wedding took place in 1843. A year later, their son was born. He was the first of their five children. In honor of François’s brother, they named him Dominique.

François Peccatte’s father-in-law was a violin maker and owned a thriving workshop in Mirecourt. With his help, François started his own business, and a year later he employed three people in his own workshop and another four who worked for him from home. In a letter to the Prefect, in which he requested permission to participate in the National Exhibition in Paris, he had written that he would be able to provide permanent employment for another eight to ten people from the neighborhood if his name became better known. A response from the Prefect has never been found. Dominique did, however, participate in the 1844 Exhibition Nationale in Paris—the event François had referred to in his letter—and won a bronze medal. François did not participate.

Dominique Peccatte was still living in Paris, but a terrifying atmosphere had hung over the city for months. “Tens of thousands of armed workers, hungry and unemployed, roamed the streets”, as Dominique wrote. He did not wait for the impending revolution and returned to Mirecourt at the end of 1847. There, in the house his mother had left him, he set up his own business. From that moment on, François and Dominique worked closely together again; Dominique was located on Rue des Vosges and François a few streets away. They did not enter into a formal partnership. On their stationery and in the local archives, the two brothers distinguished themselves from one another as Peccatte “ainé” for Dominique and Peccatte “jeune” for François.

Between 1847 and 1849, two children were born to François and Marie Françoise—their third and fourth. Both lived only a few months. The fifth child, born in 1850, remained healthy and was named after his brother Charles, who had died a year earlier. François’s older children had no interest in the trade, but the youngest, Charles, did.

In 1851, François decided to return to Paris. He sold the house in Mirecourt for a substantial sum that would be paid to him in installments over fifteen years and on which he could live comfortably. A few months later, in 1852, he left. Presumably because he had fallen ill, François did not immediately set up his own workshop in Paris, but instead began working for Jean Baptiste Vuillaume, the great violin maker with whom he was friends and who had by then built up a small empire.

In addition to his Paris home at 11 Rue des Lavandières-Sainte-Opportune, François Peccatte still owned several plots of land with buildings in Mirecourt, including his old workshop. He used it to make a few bows himself, but he mainly used that address for business purposes.

He never got around to starting his own business in Paris. François Peccatte died at the age of 35 at his home on Rue des Lavandières. His son Charles was only five. Marie Françoise, his widow, married Auguste Lenoble, who had been a student of François’s. Lenoble adopted Charles, helped him develop his talents, and passed on his father’s expertise to him.

Work and Influence

François Peccatte’s first bows closely resembled those of his older brother Dominique; according to Millant, however, the curve at the bottom of the bow head was carved with slightly greater precision. Dominique’s model is described as a compromise between Tourte and Persoit, and François’s work initially reflects this as well. With Dominique, no two bows were alike because he worked so intuitively and spontaneously. François was slightly more consistent in his work; the differences are smaller and less noticeable than with Dominique.

It is almost certain that François worked in Paris not only with Dominique, but also with Joseph Marie Lafleur. Lafleur had remained in Dominique’s employ after Lupot’s death. The pommels of François’s canes later came to closely resemble those of Lafleur.

After 1847, the bows made by the two brothers began to resemble each other more and more, as they worked together frequently. Experts sometimes recognize the handiwork of one brother in a bow bearing the other’s brand mark, and vice versa. Influenced by the Romantics, composers sought greater emotional extremes. Peccatte’s bows were ideally suited for this and were therefore in very high demand.

With such a highly respected brother, it wasn’t easy for François to reach the same level. François did try, and according to experts, he succeeded quite well between 1844 and 1854, but the attention and honor nevertheless went to Dominique time and again.

In Mirecourt, François mainly made bows from snakewood, a type of wood comparable to the more common pernambuco. Price lists show that François sold his bows for prices ranging from 1 to 50 francs, which was very inexpensive compared to the prices charged in Paris for the same quality. Chanot charged between 11 and 100 francs.

François was not as productive as Dominique, who sometimes made as many as one bow a day. His health likely did not allow for that. In his later years, his work showed a noticeable decline in quality. He rarely stamped them anymore.

Given that many of François’s bows resembled Dominique’s, it is likely that over the years a significant number of his bows were attributed to Dominique. The price of Dominique’s bows was many times higher than that of François’s. It is therefore no longer possible to determine exactly how large François’s production was, but his workshop in Mirecourt—where five people worked for him—presumably produced about 350 bows per year under his name.

For François, who died young, the fame of Dominique—who, along with X.F. Tourte, is considered one of the greatest bow makers of all time—was too great for him to match during his 15 years of active work.

The bow in the collection of the Musical Instrument Fund is a magnificent example of the work he produced during his prime.

Sources

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

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

Tarisio, Cozio Digital Archive, accessed in 2022.

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

Geneanet, accessed in 2022.

Archives Nationales de France, accessed in 2022.

Fontainebleau-Paris Archives, accessed in 2022.

Mesdemarches.culture.france, accessed in 2022.