Going For Baroque!
World-renowned bow maker, Ralph Ashmead.
THE ART OF BOW MAKING: An Interview With Ralph Ashmead
Story and Photos by Thomas Atkins
It is amazing how music is carried through the generations. Even though it is constantly changing and mutating through different sounds and instruments over the years, the tunes of the past are still playing loud and clear. Today, one is allowed to musically time travel through the generations and experience the sounds from that era by the turn of the dial. One can experience the ‘classics’ of the 70s and 80s, the ‘oldies’ of the 50s and 60s, and, if one chooses, the songs of the ‘oldie-oldies’, dating back to the 1600s! In fact the tunes that were played over 350 years ago, are still played today…live! This is made possible through the fine craftsmanship of early instrument makers, who replicate the instrument models of those times. Tuolumne County resident, Ralph Ashmead, is one of these talented craftsmen, and has been making world-renowned bows to accompany these early instruments for over 25 years.
Ralph, who specializes in bows for the Baroque era (1650-1750) and Classical era (1750-1850), is able to authentically replicate these bows and provide musicians a product that produces a sound that would have been heard during these early time periods. Keeping within the historical framework of the day, Ralph handcrafts his bows out of the finest material available and has earned himself quite a reputation in the bow making industry. Since his first bow in the early 80s, Ralph has transformed ordinary pieces of wood into works of art – an art that he has mastered quite well. In fact, his bows are used in orchestras and musical groups all over the world and articles and photos of his skillfully crafted bows have been published in several newspapers, and graced the cover of Fine Wood Working Design Book, Strad Magazine and Strings Magazine.Ralphs introduction to music began in the Bay Area when he started studying the classical guitar during his senior year of high school.
Ralph doing what he does best in his bow making shop.
“I took private lessons and then when I went to college I took a bunch of generic music classes,” he recalled. “I was kind of majoring in music, but I didn’t really go all the way through with it because I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do at that time.”
Ralph, who had always been a talented craftsman, decided to combine his skills in woodworking with his newly acquired love for music and started studying instrument making in the late 70s. He soon found himself in Vermont taking classes and learning the basics of this time-consuming process. His first class was a six-week long guitar building class.
“It was a great experience,” he said. “After making some guitars I went back to school and got into different types of woodworking, but I still kind of had the itch to make instruments.”
Scratching this itch, Ralph decided to move to North Carolina where he spent two and a half years as an apprentice studying the art of early instrument making. Through this experience Ralph handcrafted lutes, guitars, violins and viola de gambas. When Ralph returned to the Bay Area in the early 80s, his knowledge and skill allowed him to build these instruments on his own, and it was only a matter before he started making the instrument’s counterparts as well.
“I didn’t get into bow making until a year or two later, but it was a natural progression,” he said. “I was making instruments that needed a bow and because I was making early instruments, bows from that era were hard to find.”
Encouraged by a local string teacher to make some early style bows, Ralph soon realized that bow making fit his personality and his skills. Plus, the timing was perfect.During this time the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra was just starting up and bows were becoming a necessity. It was also a time when the San Francisco Early Music Society concert series was bringing in early music specialists from all over the world.
A beautifully carved viola de gamba that Ralph built while studying instrument making in North Carolina.
“My early customers were from the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra,” he said. “They were kind of starting out as an orchestra at that point and I was starting out as a bow maker. We got to know each other and because they wanted bows for the right time period instruments, I would bring my bows to rehearsals and they would try them out. Sometimes they would buy them and sometimes they wouldn’t and I would go back to the shop at my house and make something different. There was a lot of trial and error.”
Ralph also knew several people that were teachers of these early instruments who had students that needed bows. Word began to spread about his bows and he began to interact and do business with groups like the English Concert, Academy of Ancient Music, Orchestra of the 18th Century, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and soloists like Jaap Schroeder and Stanley Richie.
“I was getting more and more orders for them and I was seeing a need so I started making bows more steadily and eventually dropped the instruments all together because I had full time work making bows,” he said. “Most of my customers were people who played Baroque music like Bach or Vivaldi and wanted to try to play them authentic to the time period in the way the instruments were set up back then. To do this, they must use Baroque style bows, which are significantly different than the modern bows.”
It wasn’t long before Ralph started to take his bows outside of the state. By attending trade fairs, exhibitions and early music gatherings all over the U.S. and Europe, his customer base continued to grow. During his travels he fell in love with the Mother Lode, and in 1990 Ralph and his wife moved to the area, and today he continues to make the highest quality bows out of his small shop in Tuolumne.
“My wife went to Columbia years ago and we always liked it up here,” he recalled. “We couldn’t afford the Bay Area, and since we both liked the outdoors, we decided to move. It’s a great place to live.”
However, his business still takes him from the mountains from time to time. One of the highlights of his travels was in 1996 when he was asked to bring a selection of bows to Matsumoto, Japan for rehearsals by the Saito Kinen Festival Orchestra for their upcoming concerts and recordings of Bach and Mozart.
“Japan was a one shot deal, but that was pretty cool,” he said. “They have an orchestra that plays once a year and the conductor, Seiji Ozawa, collects people that he’s known in the past that have dispersed all over the world to different orchestras and invites them back to play at the festival. They come back together and rehearse for a week or so and then put on a couple of concerts and an opera and do a recording.”
That particular year the conductor decided to do a period recording of Bach and experiment with the early period sounds.
“Because they are modern players, the question came up whether they should try Baroque bows during the recording to see if they make any difference,” said Ralph. “Because one of my friends was in the meeting, she brought up my name and told the director that I made Baroque bows, and they flew me over with a cache of bows. I sat in the rehearsal room with the whole orchestra while they tried several passages with the modern bows and several with my bows. The director liked the sound with the Baroque bows, so I sold quite a few. It was a short trip, but it was pretty cool.”
Last year Ralph traveled to Italy, Austria and France.
“Usually what I try and do is catch up with those playing in orchestras or groups while the are on tour and playing in the Bay Area,” said Ralph. “I will often meet them there, but a lot of them are in other orchestras in their homelands and have other groups or teachers, students or friends that want to try my bows, so I have a lot of email addresses of people all over the place. Last year I was able to get a hold of a lot of people ahead of time and travel to those countries and meet up with them. It worked out pretty well. There are also times when someone will travel to my shop to test out my bows.”
His shop, situated high above the North Fork of the Tuolumne River Canyon, is about the size of a garage and is filled with machinery, tables and tools. The afternoon sun filters through the canyon facing windows, adding a glow to the wooden forms of instruments he has made over the years, and illuminating an open velvet case where some of his intricately designed bows are on display. At the time of my visit, Ralph was in the process of making another one, and he enthusiastically explained this fascinating process.
“Most of the bows I am making are for Baroque and Classical music,” he said. “This is anywhere from 1650 to 1820. The modern bow is usually described as 1820 to present. I do make modern bows but I prefer the earlier styles. They are way cooler to make and offer a lot more variety.”
The intricate detail and design of Ralph’s bow handles.
Showing me an example of a modern day bow compared to the Baroque style, it is easy to see why he prefers the historic bows. With the amber polished wood and intricate sculpted carvings and designs, the Baroque bows win the beauty contest hands down.
“I make some of the fancier early bows than anyone around,” he said. “A lot of people just want the basics and are mostly going for the sound, but I like to do a lot of the crazy stuff that a people don’t like to deal with – which I think is kind of fun. I don’t do it all the time, but I’ve done some pretty wild carvings.”
The bow he is currently working on will eventually look like one of the bows on display, but at this time it is in an elementary stage, and he takes me over to his worktable to demonstrate what process it will go through next.
“I work with different woods and some of them bend easily and some of them don’t. To help get the wood to bend I need to do this,” he said, as he held a narrow piece of wood over a candle flame and twirled it in his hands. “I can’t heat it up too much, and if I stop turning it the wood will burn. But if I don’t heat it up enough, that happens,” he said, nodding to two cracked bows nearby. “Those bows were probably several days of work. Fortunately it doesn’t happen that often…but it is very annoying. One of those was probably more my fault, but the other one was just a bad piece of wood.”
In bow making, the wood is everything.
“There are only about four or five woods in the world that work for this kind of job and they are all really expensive and hard to get,” explained Ralph. “Most modern bows are made with a wood from the coast of Brazil. I have a fair amount of that, but it’s not one I use the most because most of the bows I make are for early music instruments. Bows for these instruments are made out of three different woods that are even heavier and harder: Snakewood, South American Ironwood and African Blackwood.”
Carvings on the scroll of a viola de gamba that Ralph built .
On the floor of his shop is a piece of the appropriately named Blackwood. The dark wood looks as if it has been painted with tar, and lifting it off the ground I was amazed at its weight. It was as dense as a rock!
“The wood I use for these bows doesn’t float,” he said. “It’s all sinker wood. You know it’s good if it sinks.”To get these types of wood, Ralph has to special order them.“The UPS driver recently dropped off that Blackwood and I think it was just barely under the weight limit,” he said. Ralph tries to buy the wood in large quantities so he can have a selection when he goes through it.
“Looking through piles of wood to find a few nice pieces is a big part of the work,” he said. “I buy my wood pretty rough and in and in big chunks, so I use a band saw to cut them down into little boards. When it’s in big pieces sometimes it’s really hard to tell what the finished quality is going to be…you just have to use your best guess.”
After the wood is cut into the length of the bows he stores what he isn’t using in the basement below his shop.
“Let’s go down to the dungeon,” he said, as he led me to a room full of piles of wood he has collected over the years. “I have all types of wood down here, but I only come down here when I am running low on material.”
The piles of wood are stacked with spaces between them, allowing them to dry. After explaining the varieties of wood, we return to the shop where he shows me a device that measures the speed of sound through wood.
“I got this device a few years ago,” he said, hooking the small electrical mechanism to a piece of bow wood. “The numbers appearing on the screen tell you how stiff the wood is. You then divide that by the length of the wood.”The particular piece of wood we were looking at had been drying, which meant the speed of sound was faster than the last time he had measured it.“The higher the number, the stiffer it is,” he explained. “I don’t completely understand the physics of how it works, but I know it measures the sound, and it correlates to stiffness.”
Ralph playing the guitar that he made. He also uses it in his band, Swing Gatine.
The type of wood that is used will also determines the sound the bow will make.
“The wood does a lot with the sound,” he said. “Different woods will get different sounds out of the same instrument. It’s the wood…but also what I do with it. ”Once he has cut the chunks of wood into manageable pieces, he begins the laborious work of whittling them into the shape of the bow. “There is a lot of handwork involved,” he said. “You have to get the bow the right weight. Not too much at one end or the other.”
Ralph uses a small scale to keep track of the weight.
“I have to get it between two grams,” he said. “Two grams can make it or break it. Plus, as I am shaving it down I have to keep track of the weight of the strings and end piece that will be added to the bow when it is complete.”
I didn’t think the strings for the bows would be any different than a guitar, but Ralph’s answer surprised me.
“They are actually made from horse hair,” he said. “The best stuff comes from Mongolian horses. It can be from manes, but because it has to be close to three feet long, the hair mostly comes from their tails. The hairs are all handpicked and have been washed and are all about the same size. When you order them they look like that,” he said pointing to a wall where hundreds of white hairs were fastened together, resembling a horse’s tail. “It’s quite expensive stuff actually. It’s not like breaking guitar strings and going and buying a new package of strings. Although you can break a few of the hairs and still play, when they get dirty and wear out you have to go get the bow repaired – which is a lot more expensive than buying new guitar strings.”
Yet Ralph knows that it is the finest material that produces the finest sounds.
“The wood and the strings cause the bow to create certain sounds,” he said. “That’s what they pay you the big bucks for. A lot of these guys are really picky and have “million dollar” violins so they want the best sound they can get. They will often try a lot of bows until they get the sound they want. Most of them have more than one bow and they might find a bow that works better for a certain kind of music or certain composer or certain time period.”
Over the last 25 years Ralph has made hundreds of bows for a variety of instruments including the violin, viola, cello, double bass, six string bass and seven string bass. All of which are specifically made for the instrument and the musician. Some bows are light/flexible or light/stiff while others are heavy/flexible or heavy/stiff and some are plain and simple while others have the most intricate detail. Designs for these bows are scrawled out on sheets of paper that cover one of the tables in the shop
A quiver of bows made by Ralph.
“There are dozens of designs. Some of these I copied somewhere but never made because they were just too weird, but others, like this model,” he said pointing to a pencil outline with numbers of dimensions written along its length, “I have made quite a lot of. The different numbers are from measurements I have done using different woods so that when I make another bow I have a starting point. But it doesn’t mean you can take these exact numbers and come up with the exact same bow – they are all slightly different.”
This is especially true for his custom orders.
“The really fancy ones will have a lot of inlay and carvings and these will take a long time to make,” he said.
For his carvings at the end of the bows he will often use fossil bone or mammoth or walrus ivory or a water buffalo horn, which are then wrapped in silk to hold them in place.
“All the material for bow making is hard to get, but it is out there,” said Ralph. “It’s actually a lot easier now with the Internet. When I first started there was no Internet so it was really hard…but now you just Google it and you can get it all over.”
These decorated bows can cost over $2,600, while a fairly simple bow will cost around $1,500. But not only is the material the bows are made out of expensive, they also take a lot of time.
“The time varies a lot depending on the bow,” he said. “I could work on a bow from anywhere from three days to two weeks!”
Yet when Ralph isn’t in the shop, traveling, or spending time with his family, he enjoys playing in a local band known as “Swing Gitane”. The jazz quartet, which has been around for about two years, has been making a name for itself.
“We play an occasional gig around here for some benefits and stuff like that,” said Ralph. “Everyone is working for a living so no one is pushing too hard to make a steady job out of it. But it’s fun. We play 1930s kind of music.”
Ralph plays guitar, which he of course made himself.
“It’s the only arched top guitar I’ve made,” he said as he plays a ditty on the strings, filling the shop with crisp, classical sounds. “I made it from a Redwood stump that was pulled out of the river up in Mendocino. There is this guy that pulls old stumps out from when they built San Francisco. Some of the big stumps would sink and they lost them, so he goes down with a scuba tank, puts a chain around them and pulls them out. They are pristine. They are waterlogged, but once you dry them out they are awesome!”
And while Ralph contributes to the sounds of the 30s, while playing his handcrafted guitar, thousands of musicians around the world are able to enjoy the sounds of their favorite era thanks to his bows…
For more information on Ralph’s band and his bows, visit www.ashmeadbows.com and www.swinggitane.com.
