“Very old Chinese bells, a large number of which were melted down”

Art, Trade, and Materiality in the Global Transformations of Japanese Bells

Abstract

In the second half of the 19th century, Buddhist bells from Japan began to arrive in Switzerland. The fact that these were objects listed in the so-called ethnographic collections is not surprising and the history of collecting has been a subject of postcolonial research. However, remarkably, the travel route of these bells, some of which weighed over a ton, could not be documented. Until now, the way how the bells were imported into Switzerland was unknown, and the problem of their provenance unsolved. This article argues that a global history approach provides new insights in two respects: The consideration of materiality allows a new understanding of the objects, while the activities of local collectors, seen from a micro-global point of view, reveal the local imprints of the global. Within this rationale, a history of individual bells in the possession of individual art lovers and museums translates into a history of scrap metal trade, allows to consider the disposal of disliked objects at their place of origin, and opens up a global framing of local history. Using global history as a concept, the historicity of the global gains visibility as we look at the intersection of materiality and the local involvement  of global networks. Ultimately, as we follow the journey of the bells, reinterpreting scrap metal into art has formed a striking way in which local history assimilates the global.