European museum of campanological art

The European Musée of campanological art is a museum located at Isle- theJordan (Gers).

It was inaugurated on December 16th, 1994 under the high patronage of François Mitterrand, president of the Republic, with the pontifical blessing of the pope Jean-Paul II and in the presence of the Protestant authorities of the area the Midday-Pyrenees.

Collections

Around the headlight object of the museum, the chime of the Bastille, historic building, it is a thousand of objects which are presented: large bells of Occident and the East, grelots, sonnailles, drums of bronze and wood, rattles and simandres, keyboards and chimes, jewels and toys sound.

Foundry

The visitor finds in this zone the objects or documents related to the art of the founders of bells (tools, moulds, covers, furnace, turn of tuning, etc). A video presents images of cast in the large European foundries.

It gathers a great number of objects coming from the Fonderie Paccard with Annecy.

French revolution and world wars

This zone is articulated around the monumental clock of the Bastille, miraculeusement saved after July 14th, 1789. The State bought it into 1989 with the biddings with Drouot with a restorer of the Place of the Bastille.

One finds there also various types of currencies as well as guns manufactured with metal of bell. Copies of the legal texts of the First French Republic ordering the cast iron of the bells to make coins of them then guns. In drawers one can also consult postcards of the First World War showing of the destroyed bell-towers.

Monumental clock industry

The expression of time approached is the collective expression. It is the monumental clock industry which is treated here, because its history modifies, of century in century, the daily sound landscape thanks to the bells.

All the clocks presented are in operating condition and shell (or could shell for oldest XV° XVI° century) their ringings and melodies, in particular a very large clock with Jacquemarts.

Bell music and messages

This important zone develops in priority the aspect “art and popular tradition” of the bell: presentation of the various types of keyboards and chimes, history of the ringings of angelus, against-bells of the Holy Week, bells of signal, collections of bells of table, toys and plays related to the bell, etc

Bell identity

This zone starts with the bells and archaeological small bells from two to three millenia before J. - C. It introduces the ancestor of the Christian bell, the simandre of wood, then made travel the visitor in time, of Europe in Americas, while passing by Africa, the East and Oceania.

Bell and cattle

One finds in this zone an important typology of the sonnailles out of ground, bronze and coppered iron and their report/ratio of forms with the animals which carried them. A space is devoted to the grelots, another with the various collars and to their decorations, finally, a very particular space presents the chimes of attachment, these subrejougs so famous in the valley of Save and in the Midday-Pyrenees which they came symbol from the Center European museum of campanological art of the Isle-Jordan.

External bonds

Town hall of the Isle-Jordan

Random links: