Our History

Jean Schmitt founded our Manufacture in 1981. Jean-François Daber is now a leading reference regarding high level bows.
We aim at helping musicians produce the sound they imagine getting the most out of their instruments. We constantly improve the acoustic performances of our bows through permanent research on tone and tone production.

Les Archetiers, notre atelier au XX° siècle

The Jean-François Daber team

Jean-François Daber is now headed by three associated partners. Gilles Saurais, Executive Manager, Vincent Tricou, Master Bow Maker and Sylvain Tocquec, engineer, in charge of our research and development.

Vincent Tricou , Master Bow Maker, one of France’s finest bow maker

Vincent started his career at J.F Daber in 1981 and quickly became head of our team of makers. Vincent sees to it that production and quality meet the most demanding standards for traditional French bow making. He guarantees that each and every bow meets our functional and acoustic requirements. As a string-player he tries out each and every bow, fine-tuning them to make sure that they are capable of meeting the needs of performers.

Gilles Saurais, Executive Manager

Gilles Saurais, helps performers determine the bow they need. Together with musicians, he reviews the relationship between tone, bows, instruments and posture.

Gilles is also in charge of raw material supply, making sure that we only make use of the very best that is on offer. He is particularly demanding in wood selection, thus guaranteeing our makers to work with material that meets Daber’s requirements with regard to tone and dynamics.

Sylvain Tocquec, Engineer, in charge of Research & Development

Sylvain, has developped tools in order to analyse bows both functional and acoustic characteristics. He is in charge of the hybrid bows development.

In order to constantly offer better bows to our customers, as a team, we constantly deepen our knowledge and understanding on bows and their relationship to sound.