Years ago I conducted informal research with the Archaeological Metallurgists at Oxford University Department of Materials. It has been the only real work done to understand the history of singing bowls and a key part of the timeline I have developed for The Singing Bowl Museum. I have been back in contact with the lead scientist I worked with, Dr. Peter Northover. He has again supported my dating of the bowls in our conversations. He informs me they still examine my singing bowl samples at Oxford. Stay tuned - hopefully I can do more work with these scientists and we will have more interesting details about the history of the singing bowls in the future.
It is wonderful to get the confirmation of scientists and I continue to make interesting discoveries on my own. This week made what I consider a major connection between bowl styles and their ages, which I found in a surprising place: the smallest of antique singing bowls.
On one of my last trips to Nepal, I found a cache of extremely small bowls, under 4 inches in diameter. This tiny size is very rare, probably because they were extremely difficult to make. Considered a lost art, the bowl makers today cannot hammer bowls this small. Here hidden away in a room outside Kathmandu, I found dozens of little gems, small enough to fit entirely in my palm. I selected the best of them one by one and they became part of the Museum collection, representing an extremely rare part of singing bowl history.
These tiny bowls remained in boxes for years. Like the other museum bowls, they were packed away from the normal stock I sold. They waited in stacks of boxes labeled "museum." The bowls you see on my website now are those museum bowls which I set aside, some for over 20 years.
Now I am finally examining these very small bowls again and have discovered something very interesting: they are very old. They are all early and transitional bowls, much older than I previously thought.
If you have read my other articles, you know I categorize the bowls in early and late periods, due to the radical change in construction method that happened around the 16th century. I was surprised to discover that these extra small bowls were all made in a fairly short period of perhaps 200 years, right on the cusp of the technology change. While most of them are early bowls, some are later and the small size was probably abandoned as being too difficult to make.
They help reinforce my timeline because they were made in a few styles which I have dated close to the transition between the early and late period bowls. These tiny bowls help bridge the gap. It seems these very small bowls were made for perhaps two centuries right around the transition between the earlier folded bowls and the later scraped bowls.
Some of them are the Special Engraved type, which are very distinct with geometric engravings around the rim. These were made in the early style but came later than the earliest bowls, closer to the transition.
Some of the tiny bowls use the late period construction but show considerable age, like the best 16th century examples of other bowl types. Some of them, like the one pictured, are like tiny jambati, made with the same care and attention as the largest bowls which also started around the 16th century.
All of the types represented in the tiny bowls are from around the 16th century, which I consider the high period of singing bowl craft, as I've written about in The Singing Bowl Book. The earliest examples could be as early as 14th century and the latest 18th century.
Like the other styles of bowls, there is a range of styles representing different time period but these tiny bowls fall squarely in the middle, with no examples found in the earliest bowl styles nor in the latest. It is another confirmation, since the types represented line up perfectly with my timeline. They confirm my dating process yet again but in an entirely new way. The tiny bowls are a mini museum in themselves.
The very smallest of these tiny treasures is in my own personal set and measures smaller than 3 1/4 inches across. Here is a picture of me holding it. It looks like a tiny jambati. How they were able to hammer it so small is a mystery. They either made special tiny hammers or developed a technique to use a chisel like tool between the bowl and the hammer. Even holding such a small piece to turn it while working the metal would be a challenge.
The fact that they could make bowls nearly identical at such different scales displays an almost supernatural level of craftsmanship. How in the world could they make bowls so small, they are only the width of four normal hammermarks, yet made with the same care and attention as their exponentially larger counterparts? To me it is quite amazing.
Enjoy this collection of the very smallest antique singing bowls. To hear another type of small bowl, see the smallest 4" - 5" Manipuri bowls which are among the best bowls for sound healing. My new examination of the extra small bowls also helps confirm that the manipuri bowls were all made later. Perhaps the low sided construction was a redesign that replaced the small cup bowls.
As I continue to examine the cups, I will see what sort of clues I find in the larger 4" - 6" pieces. Those are also coming soon - I'll have all the small bowls online in 2024, assuming my health continues to improve.
The tone of these small bowls varies quite a bit as the thickness and rim construction varies. They are in the general range of other small bowls and are not actually the highest pitches as you may expect. Some 4-5 inch bowls are higher in pitch due to the extreme thickness of their construction. Those will also go online later this year - the highest pitched singing bowls with their amazing clear tones!
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