The Story Behind the Book
Nannie
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 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.
On her trip, Nannie collected small handbells, which my mother inherited and were displayed in a corner cupboard in our dining room when I was growing up. There were elephant bells from India, a bronze bell in the shape of a fish from China, a water buffalo bell from Java, and many small bronze bells shaped like Dutch boys and girls with pantaloons and wooden shoes. Fascinated by these bells, I would sit in front of the cupboard and imagine the stories each bell had to tell.
Many years later, my mother sent me the bells to put on my bookshelves when I was setting up a new apartment in New York City. Once again, I fell in love with them and started learning everything I could about bells. I also started collecting bells of my own and met other bell collectors through the American Bell Association.
As I became more attuned to the world of bells, I started noticing them in the world around me, and, every once in a while, a bell seemed to speak to me. I started collecting the stories of these special bells—the bells on the Ringling Bros. Bell Wagon in the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, the bell brought up from the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald to serve as a memorial for its lost crew, and the lovely bell on the International Space Station.
As I continued my journey into the world of bells I reached farther out into the world, exploring stories of:
Bronze bells from ancient China
Buddhist temple bells in Japan
Sacred Tibetan handbells
Russian chime bells
and many more. Over the next twenty years, I traveled around the world researching and writing the stories of these wonderful bells.
On these travels, I had great adventures, such as taking a freighter across the Pacific to China, spending time with Sami reindeer herders in Arctic Norway, and spending quiet days in the peaceful Buddhist temples of Kyoto. I also met wonderful people and found how warm and welcoming “bell” people can be, always willing to share their knowledge and love with others. And I was delighted that so many people shared their own bell memories with me, particularly memories from their childhoods.
When Covid forced me to stay home, I brought these stories together into a book. I was then fortunate enough to be introduced to Andrea Durate, an extraordinary designer who took my stories and over one hundred of my photographs and transformed them into the visual feast that became Bells. The book is a tribute to her talent, my love of bells, and the remarkable spirit of my great-grandmother.
Going forward, I will be using my blog BellTalk to share stories about particularly colorful or interesting bells, news items about bells, and interviews with and guest posts by bell ringers and other bell lovers.
Coming next is the moving story of how bells all around the world have been ringing in protest of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Share your own memories, thoughts, and stories about bells with Jaan at: jaan@thebellsbook.com