Making the Bowls
Each Bowl is attentively hand sculptured and totally unique. There are four important aspects that we consider in order to make a Sounding Bowl:
- The body of the Sounding Bowl is made from wood that has been carefully selected from local trees; only certain parts of certain species have the potential to resound as required. We prefer to source wind-felled trees or rescue those destined for firewood. We avoid commercially felled or imported timber. We find that local trees have a relevant and active relationship to local people that rainforest woods do not. The outside of most is hand carved to give a texture that spreads the beauty, already rich in eye and ear to the fingers, touch.
- The form of the Sounding Bowl combines opposing aspects such as visual lightness, visual warmth, acoustic response and amplification of sound. With correlations to Sacred Geometry, in particular the ‘Golden Spiral’ that results from Fibonacci number sequences, the curvature and design of the Bowls generates resonant, richly acoustic responses. Our work with Sacred Geometry in this regard is what makes the Sounding Bowl an instrument of both function and beauty.
- The process of making a Sounding Bowl is not industrialised and every major part of the Bowl is carefully made by skilled hands. The nature of true craftsmanship is frequently lost in our clever machine age but the crux of the matter is the quality of attention that is needed to achieve the quality of these results. A made object that has been soaked in this level of attention becomes something of a different order to a mass produced object. Accomplished musicians are mostly aware of a ‘Being’ nature to their instruments and regard music making as a co-operative exercise. In our workshop, instrument making is equally co-operative, a process that honours the moment as much as the result without damaging one in pursuit of the other. Ultimately this makes work a form of worship which in turn opens the door to the soul of the instrument.
- Spirit, that indefinable element that may or may not choose to accept an opened door and abide in the space; in this case the space around a Sounding Bowl. There is no other way of understanding the extraordinary effects that Sounding Bowls have than to consider the presence of a Being that is supportive of both the maker/making process and the player/healing process.
- Check out how to Play & Tune a Sounding Bowl