Sweetpea Bicycles

A while back after Natalie had finished up for the day, we were walking down the hallway when we noticed this new painting on the door of one of our neighbors at the Towne Storage Building. The painting was of two exuberant dancing skeletons wearing huge smiles, playing instruments, and gazing deeply into one another’s eyes surrounded by Buddhist monks who were sitting in prayer.

This painting was unlike anything we had seen, so noticing the door to the studio was slightly open we knocked and introduced ourselves to the inhabitant of Studio 411: Michael Yeats, Bow Maker.

There are a lot of artists in Portland, Oregon. And there are a lot of craftsmen. But nothing quite prepared us for Michael Yeats. Little did we know at the time, but Michael is world renown for making some of the finest bows for the violin, cello and the viola. He makes them all by hand, and has been doing it for 35 years. And in his words: “It is just staring to get interesting.”

Looking around the dimly lit studio, we saw a lot of familiar tools: a lathe, hand files, drawings, and the tell tale wood shavings on the floor. He told us how each piece of wood is like a puzzle. How “you always have to be the student, or else you stop improving.” He explained how there was competition from mass producers overseas, and how his product needs to be exceptional in order to compete. He talked about how he is essentially crafting a spring, how every piece of wood has a different sound, and how the bow, the instrument, and the player have to all come together in order for it to really sing.

In addition, Michael has to have intimate knowledge of each of his materials. Each bow is made out of a special type of wood, and uses silver, gold, ebony, Mastodon tusk, and tortoise shell. The supply of the special rainforest wood he uses is being depleted by deforestation. The Ebony he uses went extinct in 1902 after a hurricane hit the one island where it grew. He can still find Mastodon tusk, as they keep turning up in various places around the world. But all of these materials have to come together within a total weight of between 59 and 61.5 grams, or else the player could get injured. And ironically, the bow itself gets better as it ages, so his bows will be substantially more valuable well after he is gone.

And while he has dedicated himself to this trade, he does not actually play violin, cello, or viola.

I don’t know why, but meeting Michael was a really profound experience. In one sense, I was struck at the parallels between Natalie’s work and his own. Of course, one uses wood and one steel:

But they use many of the same tools:

They both have a similar process for building for a specific individual:

And in both cases, the product is best defined by what it does, not what it is. And while Natalie has been at this for a year and a half, and Michael has been at it for over three decades; they are both students of their craft.

The other thing that struck me was the language he used. I have talked to men who have built bikes for as long as Michael has been building bows. And the words they use to describe their craft are always the same. It is as if going under the surface of one simple object reveals a world of complexity; and you end up dancing with your craft continually learning along the way. The trick it seems is to learn your materials, learn the moves, and learn to enjoy the process.

But the thing that really blew me away were the aspects of both distance and time. Not only does he gather his materials from all over the world, but he does it from different times in history; then brings them together in an object that has a particular strength and balance within a margin of two grams. And after that is all said and done, it won’t reach its peak for another hundred years.

Incidentally, the painting on his door was a representation of a Citipati, Buddhist deities who Michael explained are meant to remind us of our own impermanence as well as the interconnectedness of life and death.