Maker and Restorer of Fine Bows
Expert Appraisals
© Michael J. Taylor
y last involvement with a book during my years with
Ealing Strings was to work with the American author Sidney
Bowden on his praise of the ‘Pajeot’ family. Once again, with
the help of Christopher Fountain a colleague from the bow
department, I took the photographs for the book and also
designed the content layout and the case designs of all four
editions. BAS Limited, the printers, decided to enter the book
for a competition and it won a top prize in the special edition
category to the delight of all who worked on the book.
My new bow output, during my years with Ealing Strings,
of 296 was never high in number and never more than 24 bows
in any one year. I did however, also make 4 violins, all copies
of Stradivari, one mentioned above and the other three were
copies of the ‘Park’ Stradivari of 1717. During 1990, Ealing Strings became a Limited
company and I was invited by Malcolm Sadler, James Black and Alan Mann, the
remaining partners of Ealing Strings, to become a director along with Richard Sadler and
Angela Skiffington.
At the end of October 1994, eleven months after Malcolm Sadler died, I left Ealing
Strings and set up my own company called Taylor Bows and registered it in January 1995.
In conjunction with good advice and past experience, my partner Pamela Flackett and I
decided to make the company ‘Limited’. For a period of seven years the company thrived
in the small, leafy South Buckinghamshire village of Hedgerley. During this time we built
up a very strong customer base and continued in the making and restoration of fine bows.
After several years of research, Sidney Bowden asked me again to produce his very worthy
and controversial follow up book ‘Gand - Pajeot’. A project with which I was very happy
to participate.
The two years approaching the millennium I started on the Hedgerley Parish Map
Project, not realizing at this stage I would be painting with watercolours for over five
hundred hours. The finished map, with the cartography section by Rod Dew, hangs in
Hedgerley’s parish hall.
Early in 2001, Pam and I decided that the climate in the United Kingdom was not
serving our best interests and decided to move to Spain. A country where, for 27 years, we
spent our vacations. Selling our house proved to be a problem as a development by a
housing association was under way immediately opposite. September 11th followed and
our plans were on hold. However, by April the following year we had realized our sale and
moved to Jávea on the north Costa Blanca. Through our lawyers, LOS ARCOS FINOS
S.L. was born. The rest of this website will give you, the reader, a more complete insight
into all the aspects of my work and my company’s aspirations.
About Michael Taylor, continued