Three Cello Bows Fetch £351,000 at Brompton's Auction

One bow, by the Tourte, achieved a price of £206,000

Brompton's, the London-based auction house for fine musical instruments, has achieved a bumper crop of cello bow sales during the month of March 2025. Three French bows, including one by the renowned maker François Xavier Tourte, have sold for a total of £351,000.

The Tourte bow alone went for £206,000; in addition, a bow by Dominique Peccatte fetched £102,000, and one by Eugène Sartory was sold for £43,000.

Born in 1747, Tourte was the central figure in the development of the modern bow, and as a result, he is sometimes referred to as the Stradivarius of the bow world. He built bows that were heavier than their predecessors, with more wood at the tip of the bow, and counterbalanced this extra weight with a heavier frog.

In addition, he is credited with lengthening the stick of the bow, adjusting its shape to be concave in relation to the hair, and adding screws and metal ferrules to allow the player to adjust the tension of the hair.

Tourte's innovations allowed players to develop new sound worlds, facilitating greater projection, a wider range of tonal colors, and significantly, the ability to play phrases with a more balanced legato in which the up bow could be the same weight as the down bow.

In 2018, one of Tourte's violin bows was sold for $351,910, the highest ever price his work has fetched in the modern day.