Ancients far better makers of bronze bells
Recently, I have had the chance to make dotaku, or bronze bells of the
Yayoi Period (about 300 B.C. to about A.D. 300), in a foundry in
Higashi-Osaka, Osaka Prefecture.
The city is known for having its large community of small- and
medium-sized companies. Once a month, Tomio Ueda, 67, makes his foundry
available to produce bronze bells and bronze mirrors.
Used as the model was a bronze bell unearthed at the Kamo-Iwakura ruins
in Shimane Prefecture. About 50 centimeters tall, it bears figures of
dragonflies and deer. I was supposed to come up with an exact replica.
This meant that the same sort of alloy-80 percent copper, 15 percent tin
and 5 percent lead-was to be used and it had to be flattened into a
thickness of several millimeters.
There was academic significance about the efforts to produce dotaku
replicas, including the procedures by which they were produced.
Only skilled people could do the work, which left me little to
contribute. Most of it was done by artisans who had been at it for 40
years. I helped them with simple procedures. Even so, I earnestly did
what I could to make a bell that could rightly be called my own.
Rest at
http://www.asahi.com/english/tenjin/K2002101400147.html
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