FRANCOIS LUPOT  II; THE CHAMALEON

Often, as it happens for some other fields, when I study the most important texts about bowmaking history , I find some strange reticence, as if they were not telling me everything. The closer you get to the historical period of Lupot II, the ticker is the fog !

1

Being born in the second half of '700, obviously the historical period of which we speak about is, as for Jacob Eury, the one in which Francois Xavier Tourte was working and perhaps, because of the great time gap, the relationships among these characters are not totally clear. We try to understand something more starting to speak about who Lupot II was.

Born in 1774 in Orleans, one hundred kilometers from Paris, by Francois Lupot I, luthier, and MarieTouly, he started working under the guidance of his father and his brother Nicolas, luthieras well , when he was very young.

In 1794, his father and brother decided to move part of the business in the capital to increase their working volume and to find new customers and Francois II remained in his hometown in order to carry out the important deals they had.

At that time, Orleans was famous for its fabrics and, as you may know, for Pernambuco, that was used until then to get the color purple. It is a very difficult color to achieve and maintain so the only way was to use a material that could contains persisent tannins as those one of Pernambuco, therefore the in city there was plenty of it .

Apart the economic issue , the possibility of obtaining large quantities of this material, allowed him to get in touch with important craftsmen such as Leonard Tourte, brother of the more famous Xavier.

Over the next ten years he continued to shuttle between Orleans and Paris, until he moved there in 1804 and began working for Leonard Tourte, who stamped some bows with his second brand name "Tourte - L".

In 1815, he opens his business in Rue d'Angivilliers near the Oratory Saint-Honoré and his reputation began rapidly to grow .

At the end of the '30s he was very interested in a new material similar to silver, thesocalled alpacca or German silver and he built many bows mounted with this alloy. At the same time, following Tourte's line, he began to use the metal coulisse that protects the octagon of the frog.

Always in these years, to fulfill his many orders, he hires the young Lafleur and we can often find bows built in cooperation with the latter. After 1835, also Dominique Peccatte starts a cooperation with Lupot II and after his death, he will take over his laboratory, where he will establish his own activity and will work for more than ten years before selling it to Pierre Simon and go back to his vines cultivation in Mirecourt.

There is more than a bow of this period built entirely by Dominique Peccatte and stamped as Lupot .He died relatively young, at sixty-four years, on February 4, 1838 in Paris.

The style and the characters that disappeared

Speaking of style for a craftsman who worked in the early '800, is difficult because the concept itself was born in those years,consequently the builders felt much freer to try new shapes. You can talk about character, but also Lupot's one doesn't seem to be so defined, he is a little bit schizophrenic, so to say.

For the last period of this craftsman, the reason for this manual diversity as well as style, is quite clear. In the latest years he had Lafleur as an assistant and also Dominique Peccatte built some bows stamped Lupot, before taking over the laboratory. It is normal to note in these bows a different aesthetic taste and several manual skills.

The same thing happens also for his first period in which he would not have cooperated with anyone, except for three years from 1804 to 1807, he spent them spent working for Leonard Tourte, for which he built bows that didn't bear his name.

The thing is weird because, watching the work of his near contemporary, Jacob Eury, you can see exactly the same phenomenon. Over the yearshis works change not only in terms of shape but also in execution. And strangely enough all differences converge in one way.
Even in the production of the God Tourte, we can perceive these phenomena, albeit in a milder way.

Why?

Let me tell you some facts as reported in the texts.

Nicolas Leonard Tourte, learns the construction techniques from his father Pierre Nicolas, evolving and transmitting them to his brother Francois Xavier, who will develop the modern bow.

Francois Lupot II, begins with his father doing small maintenance jobs, but begins to build only at the early beginning of ' 800 , when he meets Leonard Tourte who will be his master (it is not known what he did and for who he who worked between 1807 , the year of Nicolas Leonard's death and 1815 when he opens his business. It is not unlikely that he may have collaborated with Francois Xavier).

Jacob Eury, being the son of a luthier begins with his father and when he moves to Paris, cooperates and studies with Francois Xavier Tourte.

This is, in a nutshell,  the evolution of the school and the most important persons of this period, to those who taught, so to speak. But we still have one, not even the least important.

Do you remember Jean Pierre Marie? Let's read again we read what Raffin and Millant say about him .

"The bowmaking of Jean Pierre Marie Persoit alongside that of Francois Xavier Tourte represents the pinnacle of an unsurpassed epoch in this domain. Each bow of these two great makers is a quite individual creation."( see :  P  R S: THE MISTERY MAN; THE GENIAL HUMBLENESS

We know a lot about people like Eury and Lupot  II and who knows virtually nothing about Persoit, the only other craftsman in bowmaking history who can be ranked with Francois Xavier Tourte!

No one knows when he started or who was his teacher. It is said that his style was inspired by Lupot II and Eury, but in the texts devoted to these two craftsmen he is not mentioned.

In the early years of 1800, in 1809 to be precise, he leave his goldsmith job and begins to build, in this period he is recorded as "compagnon de luthier", and goes to live within a walking distance from Tourte, though it seems that they had no contacts, at least according to the usual texts.

A few questions:

Who was his teacher and in which workshop did he make his apprentice?

With whom, or for whom did he work between 1809, when he started working, and 1823 when he joined with J.B. Vuillaume?

Why so much mystery about his collaborations and professional life of this Greatest and why don't we find pictures on the texts about the bows attributed to him before '23?

I have some answers to these questions, but I keep them for myself. I can only say that very often I handle bows of this period bearing the stamp of one craftsman and the face of another one !

So long

Paolo