Who is Who? Luis Edward Stemmler - a forgotten legend by Uwe P. Tesch About the person L.E. Stemmler I couldn t find a lot. Neither I know if he was married, nor if he had children. He lived close to New York in Queens Village, Long Island. The only thing I know is, that he was a passionate sailor and that he liked to set out on a sailing cruise in the Atlantic Ocean. Traces of the US bowyer, author and bow hunter Luis Edward Stemmler we traced back secured to the year 1912th. From the company founded by his father, we found advertising turned back to ~1912. The exact name oft he company was: L.E. Stemmler Co. Queens Village Long Island, New York In principle, there were sold all the accessories for archery, what we see today in a modern Webshop to. On next page there is a cover photo of an orginal catalog from 1920. And on the following pages you can browse the catalog a little. Ad from may 1916 At that time, the Stemmler Company produced finest laminated longbow.
Douglas Fairbanks with longbow. Howard Hill und Errol Flynn on the set. It is interesting to see that almost a hundred years later we find nearly the same forms of bows, back and side quivers and arm protectors. Only the prices have changed. On the "Bowden Superior" page you can discover the different types of longbows, which the Stemmler Co. built. Rumors hold until today, that the Stemmler longbow are included in the famous Hollywood films Robin Hood 1922 with Douglas Fairbanks and 1938 with Errol Flynn. Errol Flynn was also known as Archer, but the famous archery scenes did the later legend Howard Hill. Hill, incidentally built his famous bows itself. 1922 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak0w8ewvmmc 1938 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ist_bzlp9u4 However, there are signs, that indicate that at least the Stemmler Company was supporting and equipped the other actor with their longbows. The Stemmler Co. advertising aimed at least attention to this movie from the years around 1938 and 1940 to the 1938 film from. Of course, Stemmler may be jumped only on the "train with Robin Hood", but at that time were only small or less professional bowyers with his skills and his knowledge in the United States. L. E. Stemmler already dealt in 1937 with the reconstruction of Persian and Turkish bows. This bows he built from lemonwood and the horn from Asian water buffalo and yak. This shows this report in Popular Science Magazine from July 1937.
The next article from 1945 shows L.E. Stemmler doing the entire work, as we find in the modern bow making even today.
We can say that L. E. Stemmler is truly one of the true fathers of traditional bow making. With the sale of its arches and the accessories, however, he was not satisfied. He also gave courses, how to build bows and arrows, like this book from 1929 is impressively proofing. 1937 L. E. Stemmler wrote the book: THE ESSENTIALS OF ARCHERY This book is therefore very interesting because it gives us the opportunity to prove, how long, therefore, the term "Instinctive shooting" in archery exists. Instinctive shooting was so in 1937 a common term and not as often falsely claimed in the 50th or 60th. In the contents of the book, you can see the chapter Shooting the bow on page 29 the term "Instinctive Shooting" used in the context of archery. Instinctive Archery is no "invention" of legends like Fred Bear or even much later by G. Fred Asbell (book edition 1988).
No, it was much earlier, mentioned in writing by L. E. Stemmler (1937), as we proof here. These legends have a great merit having made this aiming method available to a broad mass of archers. But they are not, as is often incorrectly assumed, the inventors of this aiming system. Today, worldwide much modern archery trainers are employed very intensively with this topic. Why the term is so often questioned is for me incomprehensible. In Europe, some schools for archery are advertising with terms such as traditional and intuitive archery. This contributes to confusion! Why are these terms less scrutinized? Where does the term "traditional" archery come from? Here is my answer: Old school bowyer as L. E. Stemmler and others of that time wanted to be different from the bowyer, who built bows with modern materials such as fiberglass or even built whole bows of fiberglass after the end of World War II. At the beginning of this development, the old bowyers, who did not want to use this material, called themselves traditional bowyer. Over time this concept has been adapted and is now synonymous with the use of traditional materials in the bow making, or the equipment. What we really try to express is, that we use original material and no technical sighting aids, as opposed to modern bows made of a high-tech material in which of course aiming devices are used up to the laser (hunting). The difference is on one site in the material and on the other site in the aiming system. Today some companies produce handles on modern CAD machines. The limbs are connected to Carbon strips and with high-performance fiberglass from the ski production and modern adhesives. Personally, I find it is difficult to talk about a traditional bow. The terms traditional and instinctively have exactly the same rights and they should both be used with regard to their long history! L.E Stemmler was actually a very good archer
At the end of this article I want to show you some models incurred in the workshop of L. E. Stemmler. Stemmler Logos Hawk Recurve longbow
One of the first wooden compound Recurve I have researched this article with the focus on Instinctive archery and it pushed me to very much new unknown. Unfortunately, I lost the track of L. E. Stemmler about 1970th. Please, should there be someone who knows more about this pioneer, please feel free to contact me. Unfortunately, with all these merits I don t found Luis Edward Stemmler in the famous "Archery Hall of fame". I think there he should be! I salute a true legend. editor@instinctive-archery.com Instinctive Archery