Bells

Mr. Nathaniel Spear Jr. is a short, dark, slick-haired Yaleman of 41, a connoisseur of tapestries and an executive head of a group of furniture stores in New York and Pittsburgh. If Mr. Spear wanted to, he could produce one of the most remarkable jingle-jangles of sound ever heard: he could set all his 885 bells to ringing simultaneously. During years of travel Mr. Spear has collected bells from big to tiny, many of them old and odd, most of them ringable--the largest collection in the world. Last week proud Mr. Spear moved them all into his 34th Street Manhattan stores for their first public exhibition. At week's end he had not yet been induced to let loose a tintinnabulation.

The date when the first bell chimed is lost in Oriental antiquity, but most authorities agree that bells, as distinguished from gongs, cymbals and tinklers, were unknown in the Western world until Roman churches began using them in the 5th century, A. D. In the Spear collection are bells from the period when the first European bells were cast instead of being made from metal plates. Others: fragile bells of Venetian glass, Italian Renaissance bells of bronze, children's play bells from 17th-Century Spain, Austrian bells of chased silver, a Chinese porcelain bell of the Sung dynasty. One tiny gold bell in the form of a jaguar's head, found in Costa Rica, can be viewed only in the presence of Mr. Spear. He wears it on his watch chain.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.