François Lotte cello bow, Mirecourt circa 1940

French bow maker François Lotte was born in Mirecourt in 1889 and died in Paris in 1970. His father Georges was a violin maker who worked for Jean Baptiste Vuillaume in Paris during the late 19th century. François studied bow making in the Bazin workshop in Mirecourt in the early 1900s and married into another bow-making family when he wed Marguerite Ouchard in 1919, daughter of Emile François and sister of Emile Auguste Ouchard. Around 1922, Lotte went to work for Eugène Cuniot-Hury before establishing his own workshop in 1926. His son, Roger François Lotte (1922–1989), was also an accomplished bow maker and took over the workshop around 1960 upon the retirement of his father.