Insights

During World War II, an ordinance to collect metals was decreed throughout Japan. To feed its war machine and keep its armies outfitted, Japan needed vast quantities of industrial materials – and like plucking fruit from a tree, they turned to peaceable, defenseless bell towers. An estimated 70,000 bells (approximately 90% of the bonshō then in existence) were destroyed and smelted into armament.

On November 14, 2018, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis shook hands with Jose Romualdez, the Philippine Ambassador to the United States. The two had met on the windswept Francis E. Warren Air Force Base just outside Cheyenne, Wyoming. Two objects loomed large behind the men as they posed for photos – not armament, as one might expect on a strategic-missile base, but bells. 

America was at war. Across the European continent, the Pacific Ocean, and North Africa, Allied nations fought against the tyranny of fascism and Hitler’s ravaging forces. To maintain command of the seas, the U.S. Maritime Commission funded and administered the most ambitious merchant shipbuilding effort in world history. From 1939 through the end of World War II, U.S. shipyards delivered 5,777 oceangoing naval ships and vessels.

President Barack Obama’s voice boomed over the Lincoln Memorial’s marble steps and across the Reflecting Pool: “His words belong to the ages, possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time.” The grey skies intermittently drizzled over the crowd gathered below. “He gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions.” 

In late 1896, Rudyard Kipling and his wife Carrie returned to England, having spent the last few years in blissful seclusion in Vermont. His output while in the Green Mountain State was both inventive and prolific. In four short years, he penned The Jungle Book along with a sizable collection of poetry and short stories. But of late, his mind was turning more political, and his thoughts on world affairs began to crystalize in his writings. 

When a warm, southerly wind sweeps across cooler ocean waters, the air becomes saturated and heavy with moisture, blanketing the ocean surface in dense, pale fog. This fog, commonly referred to as sea fog, can arise at a moment’s notice – imperiling seabound vessels and their crew. With visibility reduced to just a few feet, what prevents ships from colliding and foundering? The ship’s bell.
 

On the night of May 23, 1896, José Asunción Silva, one of the first Modernist poets, sat on his bed with a mind clouded by grief. After a gilded youth in Bogotá, Colombia, having penned his first poem at the age of 10, Silva danced through the salons of Europe and enjoyed the company of some of the finest artistic minds of the time. It made an indelible impression on his literary style, though his time as a carefree young man would be short lived. 

In 1623, the English writer and Anglican cleric John Donne was in the throes of a grave illness, thought to be either typhus or persistent fever. He, of course, was no stranger to death. His wife had passed six years prior, following the birth of their twelfth child in 16 years of marriage, a stillborn. It was the couple’s second stillborn. Three of their children died before reaching the age of 10. Another daughter died at the tender age of 18. But now Donne was forced to contemplate his own mortality.

B.A. Sunderlin Bellfoundry has been casting single bells and sets of bells for harmonically-tuned peals and carillons since 2015. It is the only foundry in the United States to cast bells in both the lost-wax casting and traditional swept-loam molding methods. In addition to bell making, the foundry offers:

Meeks, Watson & Company has been casting single bells and sets of bells for harmonically-tuned peals and carillons since 1991. Billed as America’s most experienced carillon designer and builder, the foundry specializes in crafting musical instruments of exceptional quality, as well as tuning historical bells from early American foundries. Meeks, Watson & Company offers: