My crwth bridge is footed in the Welsh style and does just fine at right angles. No doubt there is a reason for the angled bridge, given that traditionally all the strings would have been bowed at the same time, a la John Cale's viola. This is what you find in other Northern-European bowed-lyes such as the talharp and jouhikko (which have stings of twisted horse-hair) though there the bridge arrangement is more straightforward. A good book to look out for is Otto Andersson's The Bowed Harp. I ordered my edition brand new in 1982 and got a first edition (1930) from the publishers (Reeves); not sure of its availability these days, or even if it made it into a second editon...

I use nylon classical guitar strings, with the un-wound strings buffed up with emery paper to facilitate bowing. The bow I've been using for the last 10 years is from a Chinese er-hu & works like a dream. For frets I use Drennan Specimen Plus 16lb nylon fishing line.

You might gather that I consider musical pragmatics to be of far greater importance than authenticity!