Nirona copper bell
the object
Cut, folded, and never welded. The seam runs the height of the bell and you can find it with a fingernail; it is the reason the bell exists in this shape and not another.
Copper and brass are fired onto the iron rather than plated over it, so the surface is mottled where the fire reached it unevenly. That mottling is left as it is.
Tuning happens last, with a hammer. Ask for a particular note and it can be made; ask for two identical bells and it takes several attempts.
- Dimensions
- 118 mm high including the loop, 96 mm across the mouth.
- Material
- Recycled iron sheet, copper, brass
- Finish
- Copper and brass, fired on. The mottling is from the fire and is not evened out.
- Variation
- Tuning is done by ear after coating, so two bells of the same size are rarely the same note.
- Lead time
- Two weeks.
the tradition
Kutch copper-coated bell
Nirona
Thirteen notes. Herders could tell which animal had moved.
The bell is cut from scrap iron sheet and folded cold. There is no weld anywhere in it. The seam is a fold, held by its own tension and by the coating that goes on afterwards. Copper and brass powder are packed around it with mud and fired, and the metal fuses to the iron.
Only then is it tuned, by hammering, by ear. Thirteen notes are recognised. Herders in Kutch fitted different notes to different animals and could tell from inside a house which animal had moved.
the maker
Husain
Bellmaker, 41 years, Nirona.
He tunes to a note his grandfather used, which nobody else in Nirona still makes.
This object is not yet for sale.
Join the list and we will write when the first collection opens. Once, and about that.
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