In the latter half of the eighteenth century, a remarkable phenomenon took place in the Connecticut River Valley when up to fifty hardware manufacturing firms located there. A number of these firms specialized in making the sleigh bells so popular in the country at that time, particularly in the town of East Hampton, which became known as Belltown. The two most prominent of these firms were the Gong Bell Manufacturing Company and N. N. Hill Brass Company.

On February 14th, National Public Radio (NPR) aired an interview with Washington artist Stephanie Mercedes who has been melting down bullet casings and parts of old guns and transforming them into musical instruments, particularly bells. She has been incorporating these bells into museum exhibits and using them to commemorate victims of violence.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play
And mild and sweet, their song repeats
Of peace on Earth, good will to me

For centuries, the small island of Murano, just off the coast of Venice, has been a world center for beautiful glass, including beautiful glass bells. These bells are remarkable not only for their beauty but for the fascinating way they are made.

Bellringing is deeply embedded in British society, much more so than in the United States. Of all the occasions on which bells are rung, one of the most important is for the funeral of the monarch. Because of the complexity of this ringing, I asked Mark Regan, Ringing Master of Worchester Cathedral, to share his knowledge of the ringing rituals for the recent funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.

The trip fell naturally into three parts. The first was embarking from Los Angeles and the early days of getting used to being at sea. The second was what I thought of as the middle period, when I was most at home on the ship, and the third was coming aback to land. We were now well into the middle period, and I found that time was starting to change its shape, losing its contours and sharp edges. The days seems to meld together, and peacefulness descended on them.

We sailed at dawn out of the harbor of Los Angles, destination China. Warm light from the sun’s early rays sparkled all around us in the water, and soon a school of dolphins started swimming along beside us, jumping in and out of the light and playing with the bowsprit. Sea gulls swirled overhead, perching on the deck and then taking off again.

Tucked into the densely wooded Shigaraki mountains about an hour outside of the Japanese city of Kyoto is the spiritual sanctuary of the Shinji Shumeikai. The Shinji Shumeikai, or Divine Light Organization, is a fellowship founded in 1970 that believes in the power of art and beauty to heal the human heart and restore balance in the natural world. Rising above the trees in this sanctuary is one of the most remarkable carillons in the world, a carillon created by the famous architect I. M. Pei to symbolize the aesthetic purity of the fellowship’s beliefs and to contribute the beauty of music to that aesthetic.

It was only seven days after Russia invaded Ukraine that the cathedral bells of Europe started ringing in protest of the invasion and in solidarity with the Ukrainian people. At noon on March 3, 2022, the bells at Notre-Dame in Paris, St. Stephen’s in Vienna, Cologne Cathedral in Germany, and La Almudena in Madrid rang for seven minutes, each minute symbolizing one day of the invasion.

People often ask me how I ever came to write a book about bells. The answer to that question is a wonderful story that began in the fall of 1924 when my great-grandmother Nannie Spelman Melville sailed out of the New York harbor for what became a three-year trip around the world. Nannie was almost seventy years old, a widow, and traveling alone with limited funds. It was a remarkable undertaking for a woman in that era.