L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, JULY 12, 2018 www.italoamericano.org 6 NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS (literally, "lost wax") method, mixing together 78 parts of cop p er an d 22 of tin . Th e blacksmith is in charge of tech- nical perfection, the engraver of artistic beauty and a tester of the bell's own "voice." Here, everything stopped in the Middle Ages: the methods, the technique, the materials. The soil, the bricks, the fire, the coal. When you get into our atelier, you realize everything remained just as it was in the past. We don't even need electricity. Ours, it's a very important choice. We don't want to interrupt tradition and we want to entrust this 1000 year long history to our children. If we modernized our methods, if we used more advanced tech- nologies we could only tell them about what 26 generations of our family gave us, without offering them the opportunity to make bells as our ancestors did 1000 years ago. How do you survive? In such a digitalized world, you almost seem out place… Indeed, we don't really keep up with modernity, nor with today's fast paced world. Lucki- ly, though, there's an interest for crafts and clients seek unique, personalized pieces. Until there are clients who know how to wait, we'll do fine. When you work, it's like going back to a time when everything was on a human scale. Today's world lost the sense of human contact, of sharing. There's a beautiful story, about a bell ordered online for a small village near Indianapolis. On the day of the casting, a bus of faith- ful from there arrived: they said the litanies in English, then we asked them to say the "Santa Maria" in Italian. When we trav- elled to the US to test the bell, we stayed in their homes, we ate together and enjoyed wonderful celebrations, just as it used to happen in the past. A bell is more than an object you see on a belfry… Bells today are considered musical instruments, they are at once a piece of art and a reli- gious object, and this is very important to us. We pray togeth- er by the fire, we say the litanies and clients pray with us, too, in the exciting moment when the bronze is cast. That's the moment when all our bell maker ancestors stand there with us: they protect the new bell. Yet, the bells we find on bel- fries today are no longer the same as they used to be. And nor are the belfries! Today most orders are for con- cert bells, rather than large bells. The figure of the sacristan pulling the ropes to play them, the romantic idea of the campa- naro, no longer exist. It's all about mechanic and electronic mechanisms that make several bells play at once, each with its own note. Everything from a keyboard, with full melodies coming from a bell tower. Old belfries were sturdy and strong, built to resist vibrations proper- ly; I must say they were definite- ly more trustworthy than the modern, based on today's engi- neers' calculations, usually made with financial savings in mind. That's why, when we apply weight and swing to our bells, we tend to overdue it to be sure: bells are not rung only on the day of their inauguration. The real test of the structures is time. Your bells are all over the world, but which is the one you're most attached to? The bell we feel the closest to our heart, and of which we are the proudest, is the Grande Cam- pana created for the Jubilee in 2000, today in the Vatican Gar- dens. We ideated it with John Paul II, when he came here in our foundry. It's one of the largest made in the past 20 years. Continuation of one of the few remaining ancient craft methods is guaranteed for at least another generation at the hands of Ettore Marinelli, Armando and Paola's son. "If we cut our ties with the past, it'd be almost like starting up an entirely new business," Marinelli says. "We would not be considered pioneers of these new techniques. We would be recognized as the ones who broke with our heritage." And so…the painstaking medieval ways carry on, creating unique one-of-a-kind bells heard 'round the world. Hard labor, love, dedication, and fine talents work in harmony in the little workshop in Agnone, creating functional beauty that will long outlive its creators. Lis- ten closely – that sweet timbre of bell song dancing across the piazza just might be from the curve of a Marinelli bell, singing just to you, in that one special moment in time. Note: The Pontifical Marinelli Foundry offers guided tours. Lucky visitors may even witness the pouring of a bell! An infor- mative museum is adjacent to the foundry. Marinelli's work reaches the US: the bell of Westfield, in Indiana Some of the interesting pieces hosted in the museum adjacent to the Marinelli foundry "We don't really keep up with modernity, nor with today's fast paced world" Continued from page 4 Armando Marinelli with some of its creations A view of the foundry, where time truly seems to have stopped The bell cast to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Unità d'Italia

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