English Violin Bow: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

This bow was made by an unknown maker in England, about 1750. It is a violin bow made of a round (oval) medium dark-brown beefwood stick, with an open-face ivory frog and bone button.

This is an interesting transitional bow with oval graduations and a modified pike head. The mortices for the hair in the head and the eyelet on the shank are both unusually wide. The frog and button, while contemporary, are not original to the stick.

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: ca 1750
• Object Name: bow
• Physical Description: beefwood (overall material)
• Physical Description: ivory (overall material)
• Physical Description: bone (overall material)
• Physical Description: horsehair (overall material)
• Measurements: overall: 3/8 in x 27 7/8 in x 1 1/4 in; .9525 cm x 70.8025 cm x 3.175 cm
• place made: United Kingdom: England
• ID Number: MI.72.15
• catalog number: 72.15
• accession number: 296918
• Credit Line: Gift of Janos Scholz
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.