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Radio Extra: These Violin Bows Cost $6K. Why? They Use Mammoth Tusks

March 27, 2015 4:20pm | Updated March 27, 2015 4:20pm
Eric Swanson is a bow maker in the Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave.
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DNAinfo/Kyla Gardner

DOWNTOWN — When someone made off with a Milwaukee concertmaster's 300-year-old, $5 million Stradivarius violin last year, no one said, "But what about the bows?!"

So it goes for the violin world.

Stringed instruments and horse-hair bows date back to the 10th century, but with all the attention paid to the home of Antonio Stradivari and the luthier's contemporaries, the father of the modern bow, "the Stradivari of bow making," Frenchman François Xavier Tourte, isn't a household name.

On this DNAinfo Radio Extra, Kyla Gardner discusses the process of rehairing a bow:

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