Grassmayr Bell Museum...

Ok it really was a pretty quiet weekend around here considering that the grand kids came, I had an eye surgery, we played music for church and a funeral and I build a psycho box guitar distortion pedal. So I sit this morning, thinking noisy and remembered that I need to post some photos from the Bell Museum we visited in Innsbruck, Austria.  

The Grassmayr Bell Museum is not only a museum but also a foundry that the family has been operating to cast bells for 14 generations. Their bells are in 100 countries. Might be a pretty good chance you have heard one. Bells are the oldest percussion instruments and the first use was in China 4000 years ago. From here they spread across the world and uses of large bells by rich people to show off wealth, small bells for working classes to signal the end of a work shift, finely tuned bells of the musicians and religious view that the bell was the instrument of the gods bells have a wide variety of function. 

I looked up a bit of bell history and while it seems Christians are a little late to the game they have made up for lost time. The bell has many mentions in the Bible and historians give credit to Moses who studied in the Egyptian priesthood for introducing the bell to the early church. Goes to prove there is nothing like the influence of a well traveled and educated man. 

I think it's pretty cool that the bell is a link to musical and spiritual things in every culture.   

Now that some time has passed since I mad these photos I don't recall why I picked out this bell. I think it was very old and it seems that the date 1088 rings a bell so to speak. 

In the foundry. 

Bells in the courtyard. There was not a lot of info on these outside bells. Some may have been old, so new. A bell is like the good things in life. Not much changes. 

Those look like bullet holes to me. 

The following photos were made by Cathy. 

Making bells and fishing. Yeah, let's put those two things together.  

I bet that's some pretty old wood. 

We are used to a life style that tells us "at the sound of the bell you will..." I don't believe that was what those guys and gals back 4000 years ago were thinking. They wanted sound alright but it was a sound to make you look, make you think, make you begin, make you happy or sign that you were sad. If you are like me and think that things were pretty quiet maybe you were just hearing ancient bells.