Franz Albert Nürnberger jun. – Violin Bow, Markneukirchen circa 1920

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Branded:

*ALBERT NÜRNBERGER*
This is a restoration of an older German violin bow I have had in my collection since the mid-1980’s. The Covid time period allowed me to pull everything out, categorize, and prioritize my collection of hundreds of older bows. As a young guy totally into instruments and bows my dad and I spent many weekends collecting and purchasing string instruments in the New York/New Jersey area where I grew up as a kid. This is one of those bows. I’m finally getting to these sticks and having a blast doing the research on them too. This is a beautiful Nürnberger violin bow from Franz Albert Nürnberger, jun. (Markneukirchen 1854 – 1931). The bow is branded and was made sometime in the 1920’s. Franz Albert Nürnberger, jun. studied bow making with his father. He was one of those who signed the founding document of the Markneukirchen bow maker’s guild in 1888. He took over the management of the family shop after his father’s death in 1894 and continued to lead it to an outstanding position in the bow world. Beginning in 1890 he stamped his bows three different ways. His third way is the stick we have with the asterisk on both sides of a simple font stamp. The bow is a classic Voirin French model, with a head that has an upright feel, the nose is elongated and thin and the back of the head is also extended, but the lines are crisp.

This bow is over the top NICE!

The stick is round section with beautiful tight grain pernambuco wood. The color jumps. A gorgeous orange/brown that is basically flawless. Everything about the stick is well proportioned and the frog has clear classic lines and screams of the basic model used by the family. The bow is firm and plays better than well. The silver liner is secured with two silver pins. The three-part button shows the evenly formed long and short collars. This button and the precise chamfers in the button show the influence of the French modeling. The frog has plain mother-of-pearl eyes, no rings. The winding and thumb leather were toast. We had to replace them. New silver winding and leathers to match exactly what was there to begin with. We brought the weight of the bow just a hair under 60.0 grams. This is where I believe the bow gram weight was originally set. This is an outstanding playing stick waiting for a fine player to be a great steward of this bow for the next generation.

Weight fully haired 59.9 grams.