Catherine Janssens

Daoudi Hassoun graduated from Newark School of violin making in 2008. He then trained as a bowmaker with Robert Pierce and Blaise Emmelin in Brussels where he joined Atelier Flagey and worked in collaboration with them and violin makers Catherine Janssens and Joanne Van Bosterhaut and bow maker Victor Bernard for 6 years. Then he moved to Loctudy in Bretagne to work with Éric Fournier.

In 2016 he moved to Angoulême (France) to focus on his own bows and received a grant from the Marcel Vatelot Foundation to support the development of his own workshop. Since 2019, he renews his collaboration with Catherine Janssens in her atelier in Brussels, coming every month to work on the bows there.

For more than 30 years Robert Pierce has been making bows focused on playing quality where choice of wood is the essential factor for richness of sound, timbres, colours and overtones. His bows are used on four continents and on some of the world’s most famous instruments.

Robert Pierce is Irish and was a cellist in his native National Symphony Orchestra for 12 years. He is a member of the Groupe des Luthiers et Archetiers d’Art de France.