There is something fascinating about bells. Maybe because they are not just tools creating special pure sounds. They are also means of communication with God and other people. They serve to attract people’s attention to events taking place in a church. Bellringing after all can be solemn or mournful, it can tell the good news or simply please our ears with the music created by a bell-ringer.
More than this, each bell is a masterpiece by itself.
In a little city of Tutaev of the Yaroslavl region there is a bell casting factory. Probably it can be called world-known. Bells of Tutaev ring all over Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
They should think about details first: how will this bell look like? Then they cut patterns which will determine its shape. And only then starts the long process when clay is put on the rod layer by layer. This clay is special, by the way. It is brought from some quarry of the Yaroslavl region. But do not ask which quarry exactly. It’s the secret of the masters of Tutaev.
The owner and the soul of the factory is Nikolay Shuvalov. In fact the factory is named after him – The Bell Casting Factory of Nikolay Shuvalov. He knows everything about bells creation.
The pattern rotates making more than one hundred rounds a day.
The clay is put on the workpiece layer by layer and the quality of clay is becoming better and better – the clay is getting thinner and thinner till a full-shaped bell appears on the spindle. But this bell is from clay, not copper. And it’s only the inner surface of the bell. Then they put another pattern on the rod to “carve” the external profile of the future bell. And again they put clay layer by layer – but this clay of another quality.
Then they decorate the bell: it’s also quite a laborious process. Such decorations are firstly made from plasticine, then casted and made in wax. Finally wax letters and images are applied on a bell.
When the exterior of the bell is ready, the outer clay cover is carefully removed and destroyed.
And only after two months of work starts the process of casting. It takes hardly more than ten minutes (for bells of an average size). Then metal cools down and the bell is almost ready.
What remains is to attach a clapper to the bell. Clappers may look like on the photo above.
And here they are: ready bells!
Now they can ring them!
Each bell has its own “voice”, the purer sound it produces, the more expensive it is. On some of the bells chalk marks can be noticed – these are musical notes they sing.
This one was made with support of the former president of Russia and his family. By the way it’s not very big.
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