Jean Baptiste Vuillaume, French luthier

Jean Baptiste Vuillaume was without a doubt the most successful violin maker of the 19th century. In fact, in purely commercial terms, he was probably the best luthier in history, with no exception of Stradivari. Very rarely does such consummate craftsmanship reside in the same character as single-minded ambition, intelligence, and entrepreneurial skill. With a traditional and unexceptional training in violin making at Mirecourt, he built a virtual empire in Paris in the second half of the century, and his influence can still be easily seen and felt in all aspects of the violin trade and trade. bowstring.

He was born in Mirecourt in 1798, a small town in the Vosges that had long focused on instrument making. His father, Claude-Francois, did not distinguish himself as a violin maker, but the family had been active in the trade since the early 17th century. Jean-Baptiste showed his ambition early on and, after apprenticing with his father, he went to the capital in 1818, where he found work with Francois Chanot. Chanot was an experimenter, one of the first creators to attempt to apply scientifically informed acoustic principles to his work, surely stimulating Vuillaume’s imaginative and investigative mind during the first three years of the young luthier’s career in Paris. In 1821, Vuillaume moved into the workshop of Nicolas Antoine Lete, a fellow native of Mirecourt, where he remained, ostensibly as a partner, until 1825.

Meanwhile, Vuillaume had been making his own instruments and refining his Mirecourt style to match the innovations of the great Nicolas Lupot. Lupot was at the time the finest maker of the Paris school, responsible for reinstating the classical principles of Stradivari, underpinned by rigorous craftsmanship and an academic approach to detail and precision. All of these ideas provided the environment in which Vuillaume was to flourish and succeed. Lupot died in 1824, leaving no heirs to his business other than his apprentice Charles Francois Gand.

Beginning in 1823, Vuillaume began to label his own work, which consisted of uniformly varnished dark red instruments in the style of Lupot. He too was already heavily involved in bow making and, beginning in 1823, he contracted with Persois to supply bows for his instruments. Always prolific, like others with a Mirecourt training, by 1828 he had made over a hundred violins and was ready to leave Lete’s workshop. He established his own business at 46 Rue des Petits-Champs, right in the heart of the city in what is the 2nd arrondissement, behind the Tuileries Gardens.

A significant breakthrough came around 1827, when he began making instruments with an antique finish in imitation of the great Cremonese instruments that were rapidly increasing in value and appreciation. The same idea had occurred to the Fendt family working in London at the time, where the market for authentic Cremonese instruments was developing just as fast.

Vuillaume quickly mastered techniques for giving his instruments an aged appearance, with darkened wood and weathered varnish, setting the standard for many other Parisian makers. The business flourished and he expanded his workshop by hiring assistants, mostly highly skilled craftsmen from Mirecourt, including Hippolyte Silvestre and Honore Derazey, both of whom went on to become important creators in their own right.

By examining original instruments for reproduction, Vuillaume also developed a connoisseur’s eye, and business as a skilled dealer in antique instruments brought more custom to his Paris shop. By 1850 his business was on a truly international level. and Charles Adolphe Maucotel had become his shop foreman.

Vuillaume was responsible for making many of the best bows to come out of Paris at the time. He paid great attention to the bow and its development, benefiting greatly from the presence of Francois Tourte, ‘the Stradivari of the bow’, who was still active when Vuillaume started the business from him. Vuillaume employed many of the great names in French bowmaking, beginning with Persois in 1823, through to Dominique Peccatte and Pierre Simon, who was Vuillaume’s leading archer until 1846.

Throughout this period Vuillaume worked on imaginative ways to improve production and has a particular reputation as an innovator, although few of his ideas have stood the test of time. The self-healing arch and the steel arch are among these ingenious and well-intentioned, but unfortunate ideas. He researched the history of the violin with the help of his friend, the musicologist Francois Fetis, but was overzealous in his patriotic attempts to find a role for French makers in the invention of the instrument.

Vuillaume’s crowning achievement was the purchase of the Tarisio collection in 1855. Luigi Tarisio, an eccentric Italian collector who had made a name for himself among Parisian merchants earlier in the century, died that year, and Vuillaume wasted no time or effort to securing a deal with his family to buy the remaining instruments. The horde was spectacular, possibly without equal in history, and included more than a hundred of the best Cremonese, as well as twenty-four outstanding Stradivaris. Among the latter was the ‘Messiah’ of 1716, recognized as the largest and most original surviving instrument from the Stradivari workshop. It is now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Vuillaume’s reputation was now unquestioned and in 1858 he moved for the last time to rue Demours Les Ternes, a little to the west of the old store.

Vuillaume continued to work practically until his death in 1875. He had no sons to continue the workshop, although his brother Nicolas-Francois (1802-1876) and nephew Sebastien (1835-1875) were both builders.

JBVuillaume left behind a massive legacy of fine instruments. They fall into several categories: early fully varnished examples from the 1823-1827 period, generic Stradivari and Guarneri imitations, close copies of specific master violins, other instruments made in various Brescia and Amati styles, various experimental designs, and other fantastic historical replicas. . Another considerable body of work is represented by the ‘St Cecile’ instruments: these were made at Mirecourt for Stradivari and occasionally Guarneri models, and shipped to Paris for varnishing, which were finished in full, ‘unworn’, reddish brown, complete with a transfer that represents Santa Cecilia in the upper part of the back. These were intended to be sold at cheaper prices and were made between 1843 and 1856.

The most obvious feature of much of his work is the wear pattern imposed on the varnish on the back, which is often in the shape of an inverted ‘V’, with the edges broken into small islands of the thicker colored varnish. that contrasts with the pale gray/golden wood floor. The varnish is of good quality and colour, although a little harder than the old Cremone recipes he set out to emulate. His imitations of Brescian and Guarneri instruments are somewhat less successful than Stradivari’s copies, his highly disciplined and technical approach never conveying the freedom of the originals. Early works by him bear his handwritten label. Later he had labels printed for both of his addresses, and he also marked, signed and numbered the interior. Some of the early replicas carry imitation Stradivari labels and lack the maker’s signature and mark. The quality of his work is almost impossible to replicate and he has stood the test of time well. Although the vast majority of his instruments are imitations of classical Cremonese pieces, the originality of his mind and his creative genius is evident in every aspect of his career.

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