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MEDIEVAL MYSTERIES
Crafts and Guilds on Stamps
Bell Founder
If you hear bells ringing, then they are coming from the three objects in the left foreground of the miniature.
At the feet of the craftsman and his clients are bells of cast bronze. Primarily a monastic craft until the 11th century, bell founding passed into the hands of secular artisans by the eleventh century.
The bell founder was known as a campanarius (from the Latin for bell), although in England founders were sometimes called potters, because they also manufactured metal pots and other vessels.
The casting process was an elaborate method involving the pouring of molten bronze, usually one part tin to four parts copper, into molds faced with loam or sand. Cooling had to be uniform along the bell's surface to prevent cracking, and often took a week or more for larger bells.
For those interested in the details, a fascinating account of the bell founder's craft can be found in a 12th century treatise on medieval crafts by Theophilus Presbyter, entitled On Divers Arts.
