WILL’S BOW Part 12. The button as an element of style.

The button functions as an easily turned end to the screw that pulls the frog back, thereby tightening the hair. However, as in virtually every part of a bow, the style of the maker and the period in which they worked asserts itself strongly. We can be fairly certain that Francois Tourte, with his clockmaking skills, developed the button as we know it with the two rings that serve to keep the ebony from splitting. This button had a round collar turned on a lathe where the button joins the stick and then the rest was filed to an octagon like the stick. In a stylistic sense the collar serves the same purpose as the capital or cap on a Greek column and directs the eye back down the column or the stick in this case. The octagonal part of the button is often flaring and wider at the outer end, which also visually caps the stick and sends the eye back. A button tapered to a smaller diameter at the end would appear weak.

The collar went through an evolution and was originally a feature of the plain ivory buttons of the transitional period. It normally was composed of a large flaring outer collar and a narrow inner one. Starting with Tourte, this inner collar was often filed off with each facet of the octagon leaving a small triangular flat at each facet. Since the buttons were presumably made in advance the octagons would be filed to different sizes to match the diameter of the stick and sometimes the inner collar would be untouched. Later other makers, notably Persois, cut collars with a strong inner collar ring that was intentionally left proud, giving his buttons an distinctive appearance. With Peccatte the inner collar is typically filed off. Later in the 19^th century, starting with Voirin and continuing with Lamy and Sartory, the inner collar was intentionally kept low and petit to avoid it being filed. The large outer collar was often given a graceful bell shape. This goes hand in hand with other elements of Voirin’s style and his search for refinement.

Before the industrial revolution demanded that every component of a given manufactured item be uniform and square, people we far less concerned with symmetry and 90 degree angles than they are today. Nonetheless there were certainly plenty of other aesthetic concerns. In the earlier bows the ‘pannes’ or octagonal handle of the bow at the frog was tapered and often the facets on the sides and top and bottom of the stick were significantly larger than the facets on the diagonal. The button was filed freehand by eye as we still do today in this shop. This way the facets can be tapered toward the collar and give the whole button a more lively appearance. Occasionally the file hits and nicks the outer collar slightly. In this way form follows the working practice of the maker and becomes style.