They are a small group, and they sometimes suffer from an identity crisis. ”When we say we`re bell collectors, people say, `Bill collectors?
Bell Telephone?` ” says Byron Ward of Mt. Holly, N.J., a member of the American Bell Association International who has been buying bells for 20 years. ”They can`t visualize that we collect bells.”
”They call us ding-a-lings sometimes,” says Mimi Rothberg, a member from Manhattan whose apartment is crowded with her 600-bell collection.
But really, ”We`re just a big, friendly family of bells,” says Irving Bell, of Elizabeth, N.J., who says his name led him into the hobby.
Drawn together by a mutual fondness for bells made of glass, porcelain, metal or wood, plucked from flea markets, auctions and shops around the globe, about 25 members of the association`s New York area chapter convened in Manhattan recently.
Several members say their collections, amassed over several decades, are worth at least $50,000.
But few bother taking out insurance, Ward says, because ”most insurers want everything appraised, and who can appraise a bunch of bells?”
Bells have maintained a lofty place in American history, in church towers, pilot houses, locomotives and schoolhouses. Many museums maintain bell collections, says the chapter`s president, Terry Mayer, who designs bells in the shape of fruits, animals and seashells. The association, organized in 1940, has about 2,000 members worldwide.
A staple of the chapter`s meetings is ”Bell and Tell,” at which members display and explain the significance of a bell from their collections. ”We brought in our first bell,” says Al Trinidad, a civil engineer from Pearl River, N.Y., who had swaddled the pumpkin-colored glass bell in yards of tissue paper for the trip.
Kathryn Scott displayed three ”baby bells” that were among several she bought for $15. Gasps rippled around the room as she announced that one of the bells-actually a whistle made of mother-of-pearl and sterling silver and inscribed from an uncle to a nephew in 1891-came from Tiffany.
Perhaps the most unusual bell was displayed by Ruth Ward, who unveiled a massive bronze carp she picked up in a California antiques shop. But there was also Bell`s commemorative bell, made from brass recovered from the wreck of the USS Maine, sunk in Havana Harbor in 1898.
At the end of the event, Mayer said, ”Shall we all just ring the bells together and see what a beautiful sound it makes?” The sound was a chorus of jingling sleigh bells, bonging temple bells, plinking crotal bells and clanking animal bells. –
