ARGENT SUR SOIE

The traditional French ‘garniture’ or winding material is called ‘argent sur soie’. It is composed of a silk thread wrapped tightly with a flattened filament of silver, not unlike a violin string. Argent-sur-soie was much used for military epaulettes and ecclesiastical robes as well as bows. It is also known as ‘French tinsel’ but this is unfortunate as it conjures up the stuff on Christmas trees; argent sur soie is actually significantly more expensive than silver wire and requires a lot of skill to make. You see it on bows going back to Tourte when it was mixed with alternating bands of colored silk. Later in the 19^th century it was put on straight with a rather short thumb leather. When I was starting my career, the authentic argent-sur-soie had largely been replaced by a cheaper silver-plated material wrapped around nylon thread and the real thing was very hard to find. So it was a relief when the French maker Jean-marc Panhaleux discovered a workshop capable of recreating the original high quality argent sur soie. Not only were they able to make it in silver but also with the 18 carat French rose gold we favored for gold mountings.

Solid silver wire to the best of my knowledge appeared on the scene sometime after the second world war. Perhaps in part due to the Russian school, the vogue was for heavier bows and silver wire was a convenient way for a dealer to add several grams to a bow when it changed hands. Note however that this was extraneous weight that added nothing to the bow itself. It only enabled a dealer to say a given bow was 60 or more grams when it originally weighed 58. Over time silver wire became the norm except in England where Hill & sons often used whalebone grips. On a violin bow, an argent-sur-soie grip with the thumb leather weighs 2.3 grams. The same grip in the lightest silver wire weighs about 5 grams although if it doesn’t run under the leather it could weigh 4 grams. So silver grips typically weigh 2.5 or 3 grams more and this weight is not in the stick where it could do some good.