09/09/2026
A Tale of Two Bows🎻
📣Carriage House Violins is proud to announce the sales of two important bows by two members of the Knopf bow making family, each bow belonging to a major American cellist.
🎵The first bow was made by Christian Wilhelm Knopf ca. 1830 and was in the collection of Leonard Rose.
The second bow by Carl Heinrich Knopf, ca. 1870, belonged to Jules Eskin, who studied with Leonard Rose, among others.
🇩🇪Christian Wilhelm Knopf (1767–1837) and Carl Heinrich Knopf (1839–1875) represent two important generations of the celebrated Knopf family of German bow makers. Christian Wilhelm, the patriarch of the dynasty, was one of the formative figures in the emergence of professional bow making in Markneukirchen. Influenced by the innovations of Tourte and Dodd, his work helped establish a distinctly German tradition of bow making and introduced important technical developments, including improvements to the frog and screw mechanism.
His grandson, Carl Heinrich Knopf, born two years after Christian Wihelm’s death, inherited this tradition but belonged to a considerably more mature era of German bow making. Trained within the Knopf family and later associated with Ludwig Bausch, he also worked in close connection with the great Russian bow maker Nicolai Kittel. After establishing himself in Berlin, Carl Heinrich produced bows that retain the family’s characteristic precision and strength while generally appearing more refined and closer to the fully developed mid-19th century model.
🤝Carriage House Violins is proud to represent items of historical significance, and we are committed to supporting musicians at every stage of their career.
