A few weeks before our scheduled move to the Netherlands, I received an e-mail from Lisa Fako, a friend and former client in New York who is now living in the Chicago area. She owns a great P. Simon bow that shows evidence of having been part of a famous private collection in New York.  The bow had a previous head graft, which had failed.  Lisa wanted to know whether it could be restored a second time.  Multiple repairs are possible, but a bow can be less dependable as a primary tool the more work is done to it.

After some discussion, we ultimately decided that the best option was for me to both search my collection of pernambuco wood for a comparable stick and to make a new violin bow to match the original bow as closely as possible, and then restore the original with another head graft.

The new bow blank was chosen, roughed in, and the head defined, though the process of determining what the original head might have looked like was a challenge.  The bow maker who had done the previous head graft made the new head to look much like the work of Dominique Peccatte.  The bow may very well have masqueraded as a Peccatte for decades, as the quality of the stick is that good.  But a Simon it is, so I created the head of the new bow to look more like a Simon.

We’ll work out in the future whether the original Simon will have a new head which resembles the failed graft, or one like Simon’s more typical work.  It is not often that I am able to work this closely with a client on a bow project.  It was a pleasure working with Lisa  to create her new bow.