Southern bells
By : Justyna Wrobel
Przemysl, a city of 70,000 in the southeastern corner of Poland, has a rich and colorful history. Traditionally a religious melting pot and point of trade between east and west, Przemysl entered literary history as one of the settings of "The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk," Czech author Jaroslav Hasek's satirical novel about the Habsburg empire. What is perhaps less well known is that Przemysl is also the heart of the Polish bell-making industry.
"To make bells, your surname has to be Felczynski and you have to live in Przemysl," said Janusz Felczynski, owner of the family bell-making business, Odlewnia Dzwonow Janusz Felczynski i S-ka. "The Felczynski family has been making bells since 1808 and the company is continually being passed from son to son."
The family's first foundry was set up by Michal Felczynski, who started casting bells in Kalusz near Lwow, now in Ukraine. "I am the seventh owner and my son, who has been studying casting in Krakow, has his own plans (to run the company)," Felczynski said.
In 1912, the four brothers employed at the family business in Kalusz decided to open a second foundry in Przemysl that would specialize in making bells for exhibitions. Four of the family's bells were displayed at the 1939 World Fair in New York, which Felczynski said was "not surprising" given that the company has always employed only the most talented craftsmen. "These bells, like many others, were cast by Xavery Dunikowski (a well-known Polish sculptor), who was a regular worker in the Przemysl foundry from 1937-1939," Felczynski said.
At the beginning of World War II, the Kalusz foundry was closed and never reopened. "Some of our family was sent to Siberia and Przemysl's workshop was replaced by a blacksmith," Felczynski said. After the war, his father opened a foundry in Ostrow near Przemysl. Janusz Felczynski took over the company in 1977.
Clan dissonance
The company established in Kalusz almost 200 years ago served as the springboard for a couple of bell-making companies still operating today. But as the only direct descendant of the company's founder, Felczynski said that he's the "true" heir to the Kalusz line of bell craftsmen. Others disagree.
Waldemar Olszewski and Witold Sobol married the granddaughters of Jan Felczynski, who set up his own bell-making company, Odlewnia i Naprawa Dzwonow Jana Felczynskiego, in Przemysl in 1949. After Jan's death Olszewski and Sobol became co-owners of the foundry. Olszewski said that his wife's grandfather studied bell casting in Kalusz before World War II and was a descendant of the company's founder.
At any rate, the companies in Ostrow and Przemysl are not the only heirs to the Kalusz bell-making heritage. Jerzy Felczynski and his nephew Zbigniew Felczynski are also casting and finishing bells in Gliwice and nearby Taciszow.
"Bell making is certainly a vanishing profession," Olszewski said.
Even so, the Felczynski dynasty has competition. In Wegrow near Warsaw, the Kruszewskis and their company, Odlewnia Dzwonow Braci Kruszewskich, has its own tradition of bell production.
"The tradition of bell casting in Wegrow is as long as the Felczynski's, if not longer," said Adam Kruszewski, co-owner of the company, which was set up in 1920 by his grandfather.
Despite the uniqueness of the trade, the small number of players and limited market size, bell makers said they weren't afraid of losing business to their rivals.
"It (the competition) is like air for me," Felczynski said. "There has always been competition in Poland, and now there are maybe four bell makers that are important. The competition is good because it increases your efforts to make your work better."
Earth tones
Irrespective of the identity of Michal Felczynski's true heirs, the procedure used to cast the bells the lost wax method is nearly the same at all foundries.
And before a bell is ready to be rung, a lot of hard work has to be done by hand.
"When people visit our foundry they're in shock," Olszewski said, referring to a shop area that looks as though it has not been updated in years. "It is not possible to use computers in here (the foundry)," he said.
Before a bell can be cast in bronze, the preferred copper and tin alloy used to make bells, a mold has to be created. Molds are usually produced from a combination of clay and another organic substance horse manure.
"Horse manure prevents the clay from cracking," Olszewski said. Felczynski agreed that horse manure was the best additive. "A long time ago I thought that making a bell with horse manure was the highest form of primitivism," he said.
Creating a bell begins with the production of the mold from which the bell will eventually be cast. First, the instrument's inner mold is made from clay and painted with ash or graphite to prevent the "false bell" from sticking to it, Kruszewski said. Second, the false bell is coated with tallow, and beeswax details are made to adhere to it with butter. Third, the bell's cover, a thick layer of clay, is added. Last of all, the clay bell is put in an oven heated to several hundred degrees Celsius to dry out. "The wax is melted and all the ornaments and text are imprinted in the form's cover," Felczynski said. That is why the method is called the lost-wax method. "When the form is dry, we separate the cover and crack the false bell," Felczynski said.
After the false bell is cracked, "we reassemble all the elements cover, core and crown of the bell," Olszewski said. The crown is the very top of the bell and has six handles, also called ears, which are used to hang the instrument.
Casting starts with the clay bell being placed into a casting pit. "They have to be snugly buried in the ground," Olszewski said. A casting kiln containing the bronze alloy is connected to the pit by several gutters. "As many gutters as there are casts," Olszewski said. "Usually we cast about two tonnes of bells at one time; that's about six smaller bells."
To make the bronze alloy takes about 12 hours, but once it's ready the casting process speeds up rapidly. "It takes only about three minutes because the alloy is watery (thin)," Olszewski said.
During the process of melting and pouring the bronze, no women are allowed inside the workshop. "It's a custom that's passed on from one generation to the next," Olszewski said, although he wouldn't explain why. Kruszewski offered a possible reason: "Maybe it once happened that a cast wasn't as good when a woman assisted."
After casting, the bells sit in the pit for about 72 hours before they are cleaned, polished and checked for their musical skills.
Ringing in the changes
Bell makers' clients are mostly churches, both in and outside of Poland. "Our bells are everywhere in the world," Olszewski said. Some of his bells recently went to missions in Papua New Guinea, Bolivia and Argentina. Felczynski's foundry is working on a bell for Warsaw's St. Wladyslaw church in the Ursynow district. "It will be the biggest bell that has ever been cast in Poland," Olszewski said. The bell is expected to weigh in at about nine and a half tonnes.
But whether Olszewski's bell will actually be the biggest is anyone's guess.
The current biggest bell, called Zygmunt, is hanging in the Wawel Cathedral in Krakow. It was cast in the former capital by Jan Beham, a bell master from Nuremberg in 1520. Depending on the source, the Wawel bell weighs anywhere from eight to 10 tonnes. "No one weighed Zygmunt, and nobody was able to do that," Olszewski said, adding that the bell probably weighs between nine and 11 tonnes. The Zygmunt bell, which was commissioned by King Zygmunt Stary and his wife Queen Bona Sforza, now only rings for special church and state occasions. But Olszewski and Sobol dream of casting an even greater bell to hang on top of the Kopiec Tatarski hill in Przemysl. "It will be the bell of reconciliation of races and nations," Olszewski said. "And we want to establish a foundation to realize that idea."
Kruszewski said that his clients are solely parishes, including those in the United States and Russia.
Felczynski also said his bells are "everywhere" but he said does not typically get orders from Germany, France and Italy, which have their own bell foundries.
For many years, bell makers encountered difficulty trying to find the right materials to make their bells. "Under communism, materials were under state control; now they're available everywhere," Kruszewski said.
Felczynski's company also faced a lot of problems during the communist era, and not only with respect to the availability of materials. He said he felt the pressure of communist authorities.
"The communists thought that the foundries had endangered the stability of communist power," Felczynski said, because of their close association with the Catholic Church.
In 1989 everything changed.
"It turned out that pure copper was not a strategic material," Felczynski said. He said that in the previous decade, when he wanted to get hold of tin he had to apply to the Episcopate and the government.
But a free market hasn't meant imminent success either.
According to Kruszewski, the worldwide demand for bells has been declining since the 1980s following a boom as Poland celebrated its 1,000th anniversary in 1966. This year, though, promises to once again offer a great opportunity for bell makers. "It's easy to understand because this year is a Jubilee one," said Kruszewski, who did not want to say how many contracts he has lined up for 2000. This year has been declared a Jubilee year by Pope John Paul II.
Other bell makers also did not want to disclose their revenue, only saying that it was still possible to make a handsome profit.
"If it wasn't profitable, I wouldn't do it," Felczynski said. He also wasn't complaining about the number of contacts his firm has right now. "It's not possible to count (them) and I never do that," he said. "We cast about five tonnes of bells per month so that gives us five to 15 bells monthly."
He still remembers an order to cast a bell for Warsaw's Cmentarz Poludniowy (Southern Cemetery) for zl. 30,000. "Such an order doesn't happen very often," Felczynski said. And bells are not cheap.
Felczynski charges about $10 per bell kilo. Copper and tin make up about 60% of a bell's costs.
Olszewski said that Jan Felczynski's foundry casts about 50 tonnes of bells a year. And like Felczynski, Olszewski and Sobol charge $10 per bell kilo.
"It's not expensive and the price is shaped by the market," Olszewski said. "The material is expensive and a kilo of tin costs about zl. 37."
