Maker Background
François Nicolas Voirin (1833–1885) left Mirecourt for Paris to work for Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, and after fifteen years opened his own workshop. His slender, refined model made him one of the defining French bow makers of the later 19th century.
Voirin learned bow making in his native Mirecourt, apprenticed as a boy to Jean Simon. In 1855 he joined Vuillaume's Paris workshop, where the bow makers of the Peccatte circle were his colleagues and Pierre Simon and Vuillaume his chief models. Many of the Vuillaume "picture" bows of these years, with a tiny lens set in the frog's eye showing a portrait of Vuillaume, came from his bench.
He set up independently in 1870. Louis Thomassin joined him two years later and Joseph Lamy père a few years after that; both remained with him until he died suddenly in 1885. His own bows are stamped "F.N. VOIRIN à PARIS", and few were sold through other dealers.
Throughout his career he kept the Vuillaume pattern for his frogs, while his heads grew ever more slender and delicate over the years. Among his pupils was also Charles Nicolas Bazin.
