Bow-Hair Crisis? How realistic is this?
Today in an orchestra break a cellist mentioned that he thought shortages of quality horse hair in the world would force an end to our whole tradition of playing. He said that we only have bow hair because it is a by-product of horses which are slaughtered for other purposes such as meat. Because it takes approximately 5 horse tails to come up with enough quality hair for one bow (due to discarding the twisted and messed up hairs) it is impractical to raise the horses specifically for the tail hair. He (the cellist) said that once the countries which supply it to us are developed beyond the need for horses then players of bowed string instruments will take a huge hit because the expense of getting a bow rehaired will cost over a thousand dollars. Considering what I recently paid (65 dollars) I was shocked to hear this.
He said that in previous centuries when horses were needed for transportation and were more common all over the world the bow hair was cut from the horses without them being killed because there were so many that it made more sense to select good hair from live horses and allow it to grow. I'm not very knowledgeable about economics or global horse hair supplies but I'm hoping that we're not facing a horse-hair crisis. To my knowledge synthetic bow hair is still not even close to holding rosin and gripping sufficiently for all bowing techniques. This bothered me for the rest of the day and I'm wondering if anyone knows the answers for those of us who don't know.
Replies (7)
Who knows? But I doubt its a crisis. If / when the price of horsehair goes up, new supply will appear. It always works. Don't take any economic advice from your cellist friend - stick to musical advice.
Anne-Marie come to think of it, I imagine that it's not that it isn't practical to raise them for their tail, just impractical to slaughter them for it. As it is, the tail is merely a by-product and not the reason for the slaughter so I did some research to see if anyone is actually selling hair from live horses and I found that is it actually being done. (I am in no way affiliated with TwoTree brand bowhair, I am providing the following link because it is relevant to the subject of this thread). http://www.luthiersupply.net/Bowhair/manch_live.htm
Now the only ethical problem I can foresee is that although it would be a comfort to know that the horses weren't slaughtered, the fact remains that using live hair doesn't actually do any favors to the horses who are being slaughtered, since bow-hair isn't the primary objective in the first place and there's something to be said for making use of the hair rather than wasting any part of the animal. I get myself all concerned over issues like this and I didn't mean to drag anyone down with me. I'll just go back to practicing and give thanks to horses that I may do so. Cheers.
It is my understanding the bow hairs that are deemed acceptable are the hairs from Mongolian horses, and only the ones raised in the natural habitat; if they grow in more temparate climates, then there is a difference in quality.
So, since the worldwide availability of horses is not the issue, and since a fairly small region has been supplying the world for a long time, I am certain that it could be managed into a sustainable product; you don't need to offset all the horses of the world, so a smaller project would have a larger relative percentage of impact.
Thats scary. Alot of people prefer real hair for painting too. Maybe you should clean it a few times instead of rehairing. I used to use fishing line and pure pine sap and it worked great. Not as good as horsehair but nice in some ways. I did injure my index once though because you have to push hard for staccato. Its too smooth.
Michael, don't worry I already was disturbed by the issue myself so you didn't drag down anyone ; ) Since it's a by product, I wonder why they couldn't make bow hair "business" with living horses in equestrian centers or such in nordic countries (since it takes nordic climate). I understand too the point of view of not wasting products of animals that are slaughter in some countries that won,t stop these for a few horse lover violinists in the west lol
But for maximal success and efficiency, it's almost obvious you must have lower % of good quality hair on a tail of a badly treated horse (I read on this...) than on a healthy, groomed horse in good conditions. So this is where it may become interesting for bowhair business.
Anne-Marie
Not to be a downer, but I get what the cellist is saying:
If it takes 5 horses worth of hair for one violin bow, or let's say 3, for the sake of Anne-Marie's healthy horse hypothesis; then in the time it takes the horse to grow it's hair back, the horse must be cared for with profit's of one third of the price of one bow's worth of hair. And you know that the price to the luthier of the actual hair is much less than the $65 US mentioned above.
I don't know anything about the growth rate of horse tails, or the cost to keep a horse healthy while it's hair grows, but it seems to me that, without the horse creating any other income, that the cellist's projected $1000 US per bow rehair is actually optimistic.
I do agree that we can trust in the market to address this issue, but I doubt it will be through the continuation of using horse hair.
Of course, there's always the possibility of some kind of massive energy crises causing a resurgence in the utility of horses.
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April 9, 2010 at 01:14 PM ·
"(due to discarding the twisted and messed up hairs) it is impractical to raise the horses specifically for the tail hair."
I don't understand this one. I think it would be possible to raise horses for this without killing them. (a horse that lives sometimes over 20 could make many bows in his life) The hair would be much less messed up in addition... Imagine how much less tails it would take since (contrarely to the poor horses who will finish at the slaughter), these horeses would be groomed, well fed healthy etc... Perhaps it would be much more efficient to have a higer % of good hair per tail! Hair, keratin and all this is surely proportional to the health and care of the animal.
The cellist said they did take hair from living horse with great success... There are plenty of nordic countries who have horses for riding, sports etc. I would love to have a bow hair farm with living horses but someone must dare and be able to start this concept...
Anne-Marie
Pehaps, with surpopulation and nothing to stop this, we'll have crisis of many things in the futur...