The thirteen bells on this strap range from a tiny 1-inch bell at the bottom to a massive 4-inch bell at the top. Most of the bells date to the early 1800s -- in other words, the bells are well over 200 years old.
The five largest bells were made in England in the early 1800s. One was cast by the Edwin Sellers foundry (maker's mark ES) and the others were made by Robert Wells or his sons (RW). Two of the smaller bells are also English-made, and I believe they are extremely old, perhaps dating to the 1700s. I do not know the makers of these two bells.
One of the remaining smaller bells is another Edwin Sellers, but the rest are from American foundries -- one from brothers Hiram or Hubbard Barton (HB), another by Belden & Lee (B&L), and the rest by makers unknown.
See my videos for more details about the bells and how I constructed and assembled their new strap: Video 1 and Video 2. And here is an article with more about petal bells...
The dark brown strap is about 45 inches long not including the ring, and a generous 3 1/2 inches wide. I do not normally make bell straps this wide -- 2 1/2 inches is about as wide as I usually go -- but the big bells at the top required an equally big strap.
I stitched around the edges of the bell strap and the lining strap to add visual interest. This is an optional detail added at the customer's request. The videos (see links above) have closeup images of this stitching.
This particular item is a custom, one-of-a-kind project made for a past client. Items in this Custom Projects section are for information only; they are not available for regular sale.
