Gordon R. Barnett

BIRTHING THE MOLDS…

9 June 2018

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Categories: Musings

Tags: Molds, Wax

GRB Bells recently participated in our VIVA [Vashon Island Visual Arts] Spring Tour the first two weekends of May. [Our Holiday Tour is the first two full weekends of December.]

As part of the studio’s presentation I demonstrate wax injection, one part of the process of the bells’ manufacture which I am capable, within the constraints of time, to demonstrate simply. I am thus encouraged to explain here the process of making the mold into which the wax is injected.

Here are the castings made from my original wax carvings for several designs plus their clappers. I call these the “masters” & I securely archive them in order to be able to remake any of the rubber molds which might break or wear out. They are also the best form of copyright, since the molding process will shrink the design slightly & all bells made from them will be smaller.

You see them sitting upside down on their “sprues”, which are the rods which were the channels through which the molten metal entered the temporary plaster mold to make the casting. A bell has at least two pieces — and the clappers must be made separately, of course.

This group includes The SEAHORSE Bell with its unusually complex, three-piece clapper on the left. [The two bells on the right are the SUFI SURF & the CLOUD PALACE Bells]

This is the raw silicone rubber, which is soft & resembles a dense putty. It comes in strips protected with peel-able plastic on both sides. I cut it to size with scissors & pack it around the master in an aluminum mold frame, with the sprue touching its interior side. At this stage I must begin to think “inside-out” as I work to fill the negative space around the bell with the positive rubber.

When the mold is filled I label it with a thin aluminum or brass tag into which I emboss its name with a stylus. The mold press has two electrically heated platens between which the mold is sandwiched. A heavy screw with a large handle tightens to press it all tight.

Under that pressure its heat of 350 degrees

vulcanizes the rubber in about an hour.

The result is a solid block of harder rubber completely enclosing the master, squeezing a slight excess, which insures that all the details of the master have been captured. It shrinks a bit as it cools, freeing itself from the sides of the mold’s interior.

I trim the excess with scissors & peel out the tag,

leaving the name permanently as part of the mold.

Next comes the difficult part! I use a scalpel to very carefully cut the block apart to free the master, while also making “keys” to secure the fit when the mold is put back together.

It is fascinatingly puzzling to dance between thinking positively about the negative! It requires bringing the cuts from the bottom of the sprue ever closer to the still invisible master, prying the dense rubber apart with the help of a hook mounted to my desk. It is important to land the cut at the best place on the design to make the mold function well, both to promote the escape of air pushed ahead of the molten wax & for ease of removing the cooled wax.

The mold stretches & wants to snap closed. I must use brute strength of one hand while keeping the other facile enough to aim the blade cutting delicately into narrow-sighted space dancing between positive & negative space…

These photos show the process arrested by being held open with toothpicks… Each piercing in the design must be cut cleanly so as to efficiently re-close, recreating that detail in wax.

I cut down from around the skirt of the bell to create a core which is pulled from the interior of the master, with another tricky part involving the clapper loop which clings, being filled with rubber in the top of the bell’s interior, difficult to reach with the blade. Even with a collection of tricks over years of experience, I often still struggle with this part of the process!

Below you can see that core sitting-up in the center, atop the left & right half of the mold, which shows the positive wax which was injected into it.

Outside are the halves of the second mold containing the 3 clapper parts.

The wax injector is a heated pot filled with wax under about 5 pounds of air pressure.

Near-liquid molten wax is injected into the sprue of the mold when pressed against its nozzle, thus engaging the pressure sensitive valve behind it.

Here is a video of an actual injection:

The result is a wax replication ready to be cast into metal to make the bell I will sell.

CROATIA-VENICE- AMSTERDAM… PART SIX…

6 February 2018

Gordon R. Barnett

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Tags: Amsterdam, bicycles, Canals, Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh

While Amsterdam is another city built on an ancient system of canals, it could hardly be more different than Venice.

The spatial aspects of both cities are unique in spite that each is flat to the sea. The Dutch, coming from the land, built yet more land. Venice… perching precariously on pilings anchoring only a few small unstable prehistoric islands, squatting in the shallows of a lagoon…

Protected by all those walls we walked in Croatia… Venice arched inwardly upward, hoarding the spoils of world trade well before any Dutch expansion.

The periods during which each reached maturity have much to do with their differences. Older by many centuries, Venice plyed the classic shipping trade routes inside the warmer enclosure of the Mediterranean, connecting Europe to the mid-east, the Indian sub-continent, & ultimately China. Its smaller size amassed some sense of the mysterious enclosure characterizing an “Oriental” quality.

The Dutch, building later, in the chill of the North Sea, discovered the distances of the larger world by circumnavigation
outside the antique model of the world…
miniature inside the cincture of Gibraltar.

That Mediterranean hothouse–classique
launched quintessential herbal seeds…

plus rich cultural spores into the global garden.

… the city’s slogan is…

i A M S T E R D A M

The canals here are wider than Venice & were originally even wider yet… facilitating the floating movement of people & goods around a bustling trading city by float. Now the waterways are more for recreation, having been mostly filled-in to create space for the comfortable streets of wheels… more bicycles than cars…. more than the population!

Wide sidewalks on either side allow pedestrians to stroll abreast

while dancing with cyclists walking their rides home.

I find both cities imminently walkable.

We’ve been two nights walking the older central part…

a visual delight!

We are staying with our friend Joost

in his 1930’s row house just inside the “ring” of canals…

Steep stairs are ubiquitous.

This space has been keenly attended

in the remodel he’s making mostly himself!

His location is served by the city’s efficient system of rail trams.

There is plenty of auto traffic, but all is rather subservient to the obvious first choice to ride bicycles… evidenced by the fact that there are more bikes than citizens!

Specific, well separated lanes are dedicated to bicycles & one must honor that or be threatened & cursed for being in their way! The cross-walks become sometimes complicated to get to the center islands where one waits to board the trams. Electronic tickets, touched at sensors upon both entering & leaving the car, calculate the fare for the distance being deducted from the balance. Oh! that we could learn such easy good sense in more of our cities in the States!

We spent time in the Rijksmuseum on Sunday… busy with the throngs wanting to see the revered paintings of the Dutch Masters, which I too was happy to experience, of course. I enjoyed seeing the icons of my art history courses in the real. While there were crowds, if I lingered, there were also rare moments…

This is a stately old building, bridging over the main street which runs through & under its facade into a vaulted foyer echoing with Vivaldi.

Musical ensembles play outside modern entrances up into the museum… or down into the new depths enlarging antique spaces to accommodate essential modern facilities… I like this improvement’s mixing of clean functional lines with the original Gothic Victorian.

Juxtaposition abounds…

At sister Alice’s insistence we headed toward the Van Gogh museum, a short stroll through a lively urban park… This contemporary building surprised me by becoming an almost religious experience… I realized how little I actually knew about him. He is no longer simply impressionistic curiosity as I resonate better with his quest toward color. My long-lost painter groked his gooey pigments in a wistful way.

To be able to see almost the entire oeuvre of an artist who accomplished so much in only a decade chides my career, which began [& still dreams] in paint while getting side-tracked by the fantasy of jewelry before the whimsey of bells.

I could yet again drown us in photographic memories

proving only inadequacy

still…

I Am-sterdam!

CROATIA-VENICE-AMSTERDAM… PART FIVE: VENEZIA…

1 February 2018

Gordon R. Barnett

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Tags: Arsenale, ART, Biennale, brick, Canals, display, fiber, Giardini, gondolas, shipbuilding, Vaporetto, VENICE, VENIZIA

Our room has rich silk brocade on the walls in a stylishly remodeled building where Stephen had stayed a decade ago. It is smaller than expected… not the same upper room he thought he had reserved. But we have all of Venice… probably our favorite city… just below the window facing the facade of the church. On the hotel’s top floor is a sitting area offering chilled prosecco adjacent to a roof-top terrace overlooking Saint Stephen’s Square.We spent several sunsets & late evening finishes there, sometimes with other guests.

The window just below the small railing was our bathroom…

Walking to the Vaparretto (water bus) stop we remembered adventures we had had
inside the central smaller arched window… on a previous visit.

I enjoyed this view on our way down the stairway to the street.

Wrought iron grills always seem more romantic in Venice…

MY EYES & ART!

This piece spoke to me… I was awaiting having my cataracts fixed upon my return home…

We are here to swim in the vast visual sea of an art event known as the Biennale… having been held for a season of months every second [odd] year for more than a century… since 1895.

While the whole city becomes involved, with scattered national, private & corporate galleries… often requiring treks up numerous stairs into the upper floors of ancient palazzi…

Yet, one provocative example reached out of the canal waters…

There are two main venues:
The Giardini is a more formal park with a collection of permanent national pavilions, sometimes brashly fresh but often if not rather stiflingly antique, seeming rather tired.
The Arsenale… is an even more antique form,
while being an infinitely more aesthetic & functional space for exposition.

The Arsenale itself became fascinating to me… often eclipsing the art it housed. Part of Venice’s historic naval base, this hugely long building was a ship-building facility of extraordinary capabilities. A ship in a day! The present building is simply handsome in rather a more Renaissance manner than its incredible description as being Medieval.

The vast spaces where Venezia built her ships now offer fabulous venues for my imagination… not to mention that it offers the same for curating such a plethora of rich contemporary creativity. The long colonnade, with various patterns of brickwork exposed through broken stucco, supports an immense beamed roof.

The center wooden floor no doubt overlays the mechanique & iron tracking on which the vessels being built were moved along between numerous transepts housing workshop bays specific to that particular stage of production, many having additional tracks from exterior delivery ports supplying material for the various crafts.

All this puts a beautiful lie to any notion that the assembly line was invented by Henry Ford!

These hundred brick plinths became sentinels & sentries,
characters gracefully holding raw space for a cultural dance…

Ample space encourages gardens of visual ideas inside conceptual forests.

Fibers are integral to outfitting ships with essential need for sails & cordage… used here to make an airy tent form inviting meditation & play.

Suddenly fiber becomes bales of color!

Shipping becomes metaphorical & dreamlike…

Boxes of mirrors precisely reflect unexpected presumptions…

Stories require imagination…

Visual technology abounds…

…while also presenting the eerie experience of climbing up into space
holding a mirror of shallow suspended water reflecting the rafters…
inviting reverie… perhaps on sea-rise.

An unexpected dessert of Chinese intricacy in several media followed an exuberant introduction of laser-cut sheet-metal [brass or anodized aluminum?]

A later ton of not-dissimilar paper-cuts…

Making a wall…

Embroidery was abundantly featured as a third medium.
Not at all “forbidden stitch”… but a lusciously long impasto of stroke-able silk…

Ireland presented an arresting video atmosphere presided over by a gorgeous crone…

Bones of Lucy do indeed bridge…

New Zealand’s space presented a hundred foot screen showing a statically painted mural… scrolling, right to left, which movement triggered vignettes to become animated as they processed, being gradually replaced by a next story, all handsomely stylized in an idyllic manner
triggering inherently residual memories of colonial comfort.

Arrival at the end of the building invited celebration…

This alley, parallel to the building & pacing toward the exit, invited… at the conclusion of an intense day… absorption & distillation.
Time to contemplate a martini at Harry’s!

I wrote in my journal: ‘The Giaradini was a bit disappointing yesterday.”
That after the Arsenale & before deeper cogitation…

The Giaradini’s central building suggests being four-square… having an octagonal dome…

Four pieces by John Waters, hung thus in each of the corner vestibules,
observing succinctly the games of the art world
which happily I mostly left many years ago.

Peeking into the cafe was dizzying!

Balanced by…

This first glimpse of the Hungarian Pavilion piqued satisfaction inside

its portal of Nouveau exuberance.

Gondolas are becoming rarer, but this stalwart example battled some rough water as we passed on the vaporetto… the larger boats which are the city’s water bus system…

This long post does not begin to share the full experience of Venice, so I am planning to later make several shorter posts about those details. This verbose writer is continuing a life-long practice learning literally to communicate…

Patience Please!

CROATIA-VENICE-AMSTERDAM… PART FOUR: SPLIT…

11 January 2018

Gordon R. Barnett

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Categories: Musings

Tags: Musings

The first morning in Split I was awakened early by several long peals of bells… I counted 100, then a bit later dozens more all around 6 or 7am! Those were soon followed by the brushing sound of a miniature street-cleaner… soft humming whine of electric golf-cart-sized trucks… small enough to negotiate the narrow stone streets we walk, often brushing shoulders with other tourists. Squeals of their brakes… delivering goods or luggage or hauling trash? The ancient inner city of Diocletian’s palace begins to rouse from one more diurnal slumber out of several millennia worth. Then an annoyingly loud basso human voice [Russian?] obviously loving to hear his own theatrical importance resounding & echoing between stone walls & pavement.

Bells, & a classy chandelier from the gilded ceiling made me happy!

Our boutique hotel is tucked above a 19th century theater fronting a square just off the central agora, the heart of the ancient summer palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. There is delightful further wealth at these links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split,_Croatia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian%27s_Palace

The small lobby was enlarged by a mural-sized image of the street below…

My journal observed:

Yesterday we did several of the museums inside the walls of the late Roman pleasure palace of Diocletian which has subsequently been built & rebuilt into several evolution of medieval cities… outer fortifications & ramparts rising in times needing protection, then razed for more peaceful periods of expansion… always a center for trade, education & now enjoying revival as destination
for tourists like us.

Sporting palm trees & the beaches of which we probably won’t avail ourselves, being more interested in other culture, one appreciates how northern Europeans arrive for a sunny holiday with nightlife… a bit of which we did discover in a small adventure last night inside the bustle & throb of its heartbeat, walking the canyons deflecting crooning cafe singers, courtyards of jazz & disco, coming into soundscapes as corners were rounded then receding as quickly as entering another alleyway. We discovered a warren of venues, mostly under awnings sheltering outdoor tables served by small restaurants barely more than tiny kitchens hidden inside the nook of a thick wall… often down, or up! shadowy nearly invisible steps.

The bar we were seeking has the rare reputation of being gay friendly, if mixed… fine with us!

It turned out to be a long wide passageway gently-stepped & furnished with an eclectic collection of cushions, stools, benches & small tables served by a waiter from a bar sending a fine collection of the last fifty years of music with which we have long danced. I enjoyed hearing forgotten memories from my twenties as we people-watched what was a parade rich for mostly inventive stories we share between ourselves…

The man sitting across the way from us was a bohemian author of

an intensely seamy novel on his phone which we might read in several years…

not searching Grindr!

The handsome Frenchmen with female companions…

one sitting with his ass on a cushion thrust so far

into the middle of the stone step supporting it

that everyone passing had to try not to touch him…

were secretly lovers…

in spite of their female companions…

not married couples.

The scene was quite unlike what we think of as a gay bar in the States! As we prepared to leave we explored deeper up that passage & into a warren of spaces ever more exotic, filled with who we might have been looking for earlier in the evening, but seemingly only now getting started in their own nights’ bacchanal. Our choice was to return to our fine hotel not so far by foot… or perhaps ages away in the richness of this old district.

This city began as the late Roman emperor Diocletian’s summer palace in 300 AD or so. Centuries later it has become a museum chronicling its strategic situation along the Venetian trade routes, Further fortified walls were added, then torn down in peaceful times… medieval houses were built into nooks & crannies of the various ruins. The emperor’s tomb became the small cathedral with its bell tower added, the town buildings rose, tumbled & were remodeled or rebuilt over the centuries until it became iconic enough to be declared a UNESCO Heritage site.

Our hotel has been newly remodeled inside what we could observe had within the recent memory of one of the youthful staff housed a cinema, probably earlier a more proper theater, although she did not know about that. Seemingly the history which draws the tourist trade is not so important to the population who grew-up here, who now choose to stay here. Stephen regularly asked to discover that most in Split are happily native… unlike in Dubrovnik, where they come to work with the intention to go back to their villages.

We began at the formal gate into the palace on the land side…

guarded by theatrical centurions

The city’s museum explained & displayed visions of the original palace.

The original footprint… & it’s elevation retains,
even as many centuries’ opportunistic renovations
in-built the grand spaces inside these walls

into delightful warrens of intimate streets.
Many treasures reward explorers.

The vestibule of the emperor’s apartment was a resonant “whispertorium”.

Designed to audibly alert the paranoid resident of any intruders.

It has become quite a perfect venue for the acapella groups called Klapa

Climbing up, we discovered the opening of the oculus above the vestibule.

I now wonder how those voices sound up here.

In the deep foundations far below at water level these steps show the wear of rough traffic as provisions were off-loaded from the ships in the harbor.

I might have wished for the support of something like this whimsical hand-rail

which was found in another museum

Support, even in these stones standing for millennia, takes many forms…

While some walls need bracing…

Roman vaulting seems strong…

The history of here is long. This embroidered fashion reminds that

cosmopolitan currency was important in this city’s history.

[zoom-in if you’re into fibre!]

I was captivated by this stately sink…

Curiously high-up in the roof of the museum…

Puzzling before i grokked that any kitchen fire

would better happen atop the stone substructure.

Meaning thus that having any water meant a lot of trudging work.

Now, however, we lunched at one of the many restaurants along the pedestrian friendly waterfront.

Yes, more octopus, although, since telling friends who are more conscious about those animal’s high intelligence than I have been, i am rethinking my gustatory appreciation.
To know ones self is a gift… to become comfortable with that must be one’s art.

Venice & the Biennialle are just a short flight ahead in the next posting…

CROATIA-VENICE-AMSTERDAM… PART THREE: KORÇULA…

9 January 2018

Gordon R. Barnett

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Tags: Croatia, Croatia-Venice-Amsterdam, Korçula

Renting our own Mercedes we drive toward our next destination… Korçula… further up the same coast highway as several days ago, quite beyond the road we’d taken to Mostar. This coastline is gently complex, being the hem of the sweepingly rumpled skirt of the mountainous rib

We had lunch at Ston, an ancient center for evaporating sea salt in 200 year old stone pans. Its walls are second only to China’s Great Wall for length & was constructed to protect that most valuable resource… salt was gold in those times.

I discovered this broken bell curiously on a table as we strolled the streets…

about which I’ve yet to imagine a story.

Ston’s wall begins its length of protection in the north at the base of the Pelješac Peninsula along which we traversed toward the ferry to Korçula. We found ourselves climbing through vineyards, some with retaining walls impressive in their own right…

We stopped fortuitously at a tasting room where I wish I had at least taken a photo of their unusual specialty of aging bottles under the sea, allowing limpets & barnacles to decorate the glass! Their finest is curiously tucked first into a clay amphorae to keep the light out… making an even more visually dramatic product looking like salvaged antiquities. I lifted these images from the web to give a hint:

We did take along several bottles of the good reds
made from the local varietal…“little blue”…
much more affordably priced than those encrusted with sea life.
We will choose a few more bottles of this reliable goodness with dinners in Korçula.

Waiting for the ferry at Orebić we observe how differently this one works to our tightly organized Washington State Ferry system.

We did not know the schedule, but of course we are on holiday & do not need to be anywhere at a specific time… we can only leave when the boat does. It arrives, unloads, then leaves again, without loading any cars! Some while later it returns, unloading mostly trucks filled with both large fuel tanks or smaller domestic gas cylinders. We presume the boat travels on a three point route, not unlike those of our island’s connections between West Seattle & the Olympic Peninsula… with a separate leg for flammables…

Finally our several loosely defined lanes begin to move out of the parking lot with only a single man directing some puzzling form of organization “zippering” the cars into a single lane moving out onto the stone dock to the boat. Our system at home is precise as to getting the first arrivals first onto the sailing, but this boat proves to be large enough to get everyone on, with room to spare. None of the angst about overloading which fuels the constant fear for our commuters of being left behind on the dock. The real confusion came upon landing after the short 15 minute crossing, as cars & trucks crowded forward with seeming little organization toward the ramp, meeting a crowd, similarly waiting to board, like humans on foot at a gate, we loosely re-organized & quickly zippered up again driving into the raking late afternoon sun, onto a steeply curving road over a ridge before soon dropping down into a narrow street skirting another ancient walled city… with me celebrating Stephen’s capable driving!

I was amused several times seeing this chain of stores

with a name a bit too suggestive of the contemporary economic situation.

Kortula is a delightfully small ancient walled city,

With more luck than navigation we found our hotel’s parking… blocked by a small stanchion. I got out to walk up onto a terrace fronting the quay into the lobby of the lovely late nineteenth century hostelry to discover a woman with hair tightly braided down both sides from brow to nape at the desk… busily doing with one guest in person & talking to another on the phone with such efficiency that she soon ascertained my quest while taking the continuing phone conversation with us strode out to point an electronic key in the direction of our car to watch the barrier fold down allowing Stephen to park in a “Doris Day” spot immediately across from the entrance which was centered on a generous veranda with tables facing the water view.

It was a simple, handsomely human-scaled facade dating to the late 1800s, with finely proportional arched windows on each of two stories, with dormer rooms atop. The hotel had been built right against, yet outside the ancient walls. I imagined it as a perfect setting for a sweetly romantic novel & film.

The woman took our passports for recording while we collected our luggage, but upon our return she was obviously quite distraught! She exclaimed that she did not have a room… the hotel was full! What she meant was that she had only the room booked for Stephen & Edward… my passport’s name seemed to require another. We explained the change of partners, bonding inside her obvious relief… with some twinkling understanding… or perhaps not. The plot for my imaginary film begins to thicken!] Yet her character blossomed… she truly was wanting to accommodate our situation! I know from my parent’s experience as inn keepers that small hostelries learn to accept & mostly appreciate such stories of traveling adventure…meet Anka.

She explained that the traditional sword dance, which Stephen had hoped to see, would not be performed while we were there… but that her son dances in it & her daughter performs the part of the princess! [good subplot or B-roll for my film, it would seem…]

She gave us good advice & directions toward the dramatic main gate of the old city… instead of the rather closer, but less interesting side gate, which we would discover later on our own…

We strolled out to begin acquainting ourselves with what was to become probably my favorite walled town, being small & rather intimate… certainly compared to Dubrovnik.

We returned after that initial foray to our second floor suite of two rooms. The hotel has more than a century of simply renewed grace bringing it forward without losing much of its classic quayside charm. The old-fashioned key opened first into a rather close bedroom whose window was draped against a view of an uninteresting walkway fronting the city’s wall.

But the lofty sitting room offered grand arched windows full of western light. We opened the sashes first thing to appreciate the view of the city continuing around the bay we face… with a variety of boats sailing in & out of the portage. Opening one of the bottles, we poured ourselves a lovely arrival into a novel movie dreaming in a stone fortress stage.

The second thing I had to do was to rearrange the furniture! An out-sized couch occupied one wall… facing the flat screen on the opposite wall. Two large armchairs flanked the mid-room… also squarely facing that screen. This was a theater for the presumption in every hotel room in the world that travelers want to watch television! Many do! But…

I dragged those chairs around to face the gift of

such a generous dose of outdoor ambience…

Fun playing with the curtains catching the breezes.

I love living this antique dream!

The drama of wispy drapery was soon to be upstaged by a superlative sunset

Her recommendation was a fine place for dinner. Adio Mare proved to be all she suggested even as we were disappointed we could not be seated up on the obviously popular outside terrace we glimpsed from the small square below.

We ate well while watching the kitchen activities tucked into ancient stone-walled spaces.

We found much to see, keeping ourselves busily exploring the churches, along with the various exhibits & small collections tucked into the ancient stone walls…

The city’s museum was surprisingly rich in collections of objects used in the daily life of those centuries passed. This happily informed & enhanced my dramatic fantasies of interacting with these stone walls: protective, resisting… ultimately also restricting. Inviting thus this now.
I feel the gentility of being a tourist welcomed into
some sweet distillation of ancient time

Sewing machines

to swords…

along with models of ships.

Domesticity supporting some rather rough & tumble swashbuckling.

Gloried-all-over by bells.

I’ve already posted about the bells of Croatia but here is the view from the tower in Korçula, resembling the windows in our room at the hotel,

…which would be just outside the lower left corner of the photo below.

This handsome basic map describes a
quite compact & human-scaled & walk-able small city
The long rectangle hugging outside the walls on the left is our hotel

I found resonance in any number of geometries in these stones…

these ancient Greek tablets write a tight counterpoise to the footprint…

What a sweet nut of history!

Last dinner looked out at the ferry which would on the morrow,

remove us from this dream & return us to the mainland

More stone to come… on the way to Split!

SILVER BELLS – CROATIAN BELLS – CELEBRATING HOLIDAY RESONANCE…

22 December 2017

Gordon R. Barnett

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Tags: ABA, Bell Towers, bells, Croatia, Croatia-Venice-Amsterdam

As I post about Croatia during this holiday season I’m poring through the 1,700 photos made on the trip & realizing how many images I made of bells. I suppose I was thinking of the requests I get to do slideshows at ABA conventions. [The American Bell Association is an international organization for bell collectors of which I’ve been a member for 30 years.]

Of course the “silver bells” part notes my long time passion for making small bells, usually in sterling silver, which I market on the website: GRB BELLS While I’ve been happily in thrall to the archetype of bells I celebrate them particularly at this season…

We trekked steep steps to the tops of several bell towers in the churches of the stone-wall fortified cities we visited along the Dalmatian Coast but we also discovered numerous bells stashed in museums or even stored in dead-silent crypts.

Stephen made these shots of the bell tower in Split & me on the way up… The Bell Tower is the name of the ABA’s journal.

These bronze automatons functioned as theater,

miming striking the bells high in the tower yet visible from the pavement.

These originals, having been replaced, are now retired…

relegated to stand at such attention for eternity.

Since they chimed the hours there was clockwork involved as well.
This apparatus was also replaced, allowing me to enjoy in the same museum it’s
mechanique antique

Climbing into the throats of some big bells…

Wondering what the environment would be when they were ringing.

Such art & engineering!

Stephen leads the way up ancient steps
fortunately retrofitted for safety

along with the structure supporting the bells.

They can be massive, mounted to swing,… or more usually be struck… pounding tones from their tonnes atop what becomes delicate engineering… comforting for the proof of longevity.