I will never forget one of my trips to Nepal. As I was checking in to my hotel, I got a phone call from my supplier. They called me over from the front desk to take the call in the lobby lounge. My main supplier was also friends with the owner of the hotel and arranged a nice room for me.
We chatted on the phone for a moment about my flight. We kept it short since I was still checking in. He informed me that his young nephew would pick me up in the morning. I went out for a nice dinner and settled in for the night.
In the morning, I got a call from the lobby and went down to meet Jagat, a young man I had known since he was a child. This was not my first trip to Nepal. I had been coming for years, becoming friends with the suppliers. I was one of the main dealers of antiques and also helped them build up the industry of manufacturing the new bowls. My support was so great, they had built a new multistory office and storehouse building with the funds from my original company, Himalayan Bowls.
Now I was here to shop for antiques, which I did twice per year or whenever they told me to come. I had an arrangement with the main bowl supplier to stockpile all the bowls and let me select the best ones. He saved them up until my arrival, extracting a bribe for this preferential treatment. After I selected my bowls, he would release the remaining supply to the wholesale market at lower prices. This way he got top dollar for the best bowls. I was not the only dealer with whom he made this arrangement but I made sure to be the first one on the scene. I would fly to Nepal on a moment’s notice, usually arriving just days before my competition.
The bowls were sorted by quality with the best bowls going for much higher prices. I selected the best bowls presented to me. They did not present all the bowls to all their customers and I had to earn their trust. They preselected the best pieces and hid them away.
There were at least four levels of secrecy to the singing bowl supply. The first level was the public showroom most people visited. This was where normal wholesale business was conducted. On my first trips to Nepal, I selected my bowls at the public showroom as did the other dealers. I sometimes bumped into one or another of my competitors there. After several years of gaining their trust and becoming their largest customer, I had gained entry to the second level of secrecy. This meant visiting the locked storerooms in their private compound on the edge of the city. I had been there before but this time would be different. I was about to discover the third and fourth levels of secrecy.
I walked out in front of my hotel to find Jagat waiting by his motorcycle. It was a Yamaha dirt bike and he only had one helmet, which by law he had to wear himself. Passengers were not required to wear a helmet. Even though they knew very well that I did not like to ride on motorcycles, this was how I had to get to the storehouse every day. It was a nerve-racking experience, weaving through the traffic on Kathmandu’s poorly paved roads. Half of the ride was on hard packed dirt, dodging giant potholes. We went to the outskirts of the city, through an old neighborhood, along a river and down a back street. We pulled in to a private compound which was the extended family’s home.
I waited outside while Jagat unlocked the squeaky metal gate. He wheeled his bike in and I waited in the courtyard. He unlocked the massive metal door to the ground level of the building. I stood just inside in a wide hallway, facing six locked doors to six storerooms. Each was locked with a heavy padlock. Singing bowls filled the hallway, stacked four high in rows filling the floor. I was greeted by the boss, my main supplier, coming down the stairs. Trailing behind him were two employees who would be my helpers for selecting the bowls.
We sat down in the courtyard on small woven stools. His sister brought us glasses of hot tea. I always took mine without milk and she remembered that. She also cooked us wonderful lunches that we ate on their rooftop patio. Nepali food is wonderful, especially when it is home cooking.
After our tea and some chit-chat, we started to talk business. He asked me how much I planned to buy, telling me he would give me better bowls if I bought more. He was very blunt about it, saying he had some special pieces. I was also blunt that I only wanted high quality pieces that I selected myself.
I did not have a set budget. My business had been growing and I wanted to invest as much as possible. As long as the bowls sounded good, I wanted as many as I could get. There are a finite supply of antiques and if I did not buy them, the next buyer would. At the time, I had a good deal of savings from multiple businesses and my teaching career. My inventory of bowls was low. The antiques I sold through HimalayanBowls.com had been depleted. I was down to only a few bowls on the website because most of what I had were not for sale. They were the bowls for The Singing Bowl Museum that I set aside for years as well as my private collection which I used in recordings. I needed more to sell, so I told him I would buy all the good bowls he had, as long as I could take plenty of time to select. My main competitor would be there in two weeks, so I had that long to choose.
They unlocked the first room and let me go to work. It was full of hundreds of bowls, more than usual. I could see through to the next room which was also brimming full of bowls. I sat on a stool with a wool mallet. The two helpers handed me the bowls, one by one. One of them would organize the bowls, carrying over stack after stack. The second helper sat next to me, handing me bowl after bowl. I would put my selections to my left, carefully arranged. I would put my rejects to the right and they would put them aside, stacking them up along the wall for the next buyer.
I would first examine each bowl, making sure it was a real antique with no obvious problems. Over the years, I had narrowed the focus on my collecting to the best types of bowls. Many of the more common bowls were of no interest to me and were automatically rejected. Here there were so many bowls, I did not want to play them all. I rejected many without playing them for different reasons. Some were types I did not identify as singing bowls, like the so called ultabati, lotus and stand bowls, among others. These are not real singing bowls. Others were types I considered non-antique. They were modern bowls that looked similar to antiques. Others were late period antiques of poor quality. Some were visibly damaged with bronze disease, cracks or major scratches. A few had been painted.
Even with all the rejects, there were many bowls for me to play. I took my time playing each one, listening for the rattle sound that you hear when a bowl is cracked. I listened to the fundamental tone and the harmonic overtones, listening for how harmonious the multiple tones sound together. I felt the vibration and rejected any that felt harsh or strange. Some bowls feel very uncomfortable and I only selected those with positive, healing vibrations. I would listen to how steady the bowl sounded. How much warble does it have? Does one harmonic stand out too strongly? How long does it ring? I have very high standards for the sound and rejected over ninety percent of available antiques.
I was still selecting a large number of bowls. We went through room after room, eventually going through all six rooms and the hallway. They additionally brought more bowls from another location. After I selected a good number, they cleared out the first room and put only my selections in there, under lock and key.
We worked like this all morning, took a break for lunch on the rooftop and continued all afternoon. After two weeks in this process, I had gone through every bowl. We went through all of my selections again. I examined them again as we counted them and tallied them up. They were weighed and the prices added together by type. Some of the bowls were sold by the weight, some were sold by the piece. The bowls by the piece cost from several hundred up to several thousand dollars each. Each had a sticker on it indicating the price. This is why many singing bowls have small sticker marks on them. Some had multiple stickers, sometimes indicating weight or with unknown Nepali writing on them.
We totaled everything up and saw it was a huge amount. It was such a large number of bowls, it would keep me in inventory for several years. It was a larger quantity than I had ever bought but it was still less than one tenth of what they had available. I chose only the best sounding, leaving a huge number of bowls for other buyers. Many of these rejects are still for sale as they have been flooding the market for years. They had a huge number of lower quality bowls which they sold in bulk.
My supplier told me it represented five years of collecting. Even though I came frequently, the bowls were being stockpiled for years before arriving to market in Kathmandu. This became my largest buying trip because they had so many bowls available.
It was perfect timing for me. The antiques I sold through HimalayanBowls.com were being depleted. Most of what I had were not for sale. They were the bowls for The Singing Bowl Museum that I set aside for years. I did not want to sell those, so I was happy to get access to so many more. We agreed on the price and I thought my shopping was over.
Then to my surprise, my supplier said, “Ok, Joseph. I have some more bowls upstairs I can show you now.”
He had been waiting to see how much money I would spend. He was waiting to decide if he would offer these bowls to me or to someone else. I passed the test and he decided to show me the real treasures. These were the ones he had been setting aside for years. It seems we did the same thing, keeping the best bowls as “not for sale.”
We went through a locked door, then up a stairway with a locked gate at the bottom and another lock at the top. We proceeded through another locked door into an interior hallway. There he spoke with a relative in the next room as he looked over the huge mass of keys he carried. He finally unlocked another door, opening to a room the size of a walk in closet. This small room filled with shelves was the third level of secrecy. Beautiful small antiques lined the walls. I found a number of the thick, golden manipuri bowls and beautiful engraved cups. I decided to buy most of them and asked, “are there any more?”
Then I was taken to the final room, the real treasure room, the fourth level of secrecy. There were two padlocks on the door plus a deadbolt which he unlocked with an old fashioned skeleton key. I had never seen so many locks on the inside of a home. The extended family lived in this building, one generation per flat. A bedroom was right next door to this marvelous room full of bronze treasures.
Here were some of the very finest antique singing bowls I have ever seen. A good number of the bowls in the Singing Bowl Museum collection were acquired at this time. While I had been collecting the best pieces for years, this one stockpile greatly increased the number of bowls in the museum collection. There were so many great bowls, we played them like a couple of kids. We were both delighted to sit and play them all.
Some of the bowls I did not think were so great. I was careful about what I selected because the prices were so much higher. I thought some belonged with the “normal” priced bowls, and he agreed to downgrade a few of them. Some I grouped together and tried to get a group price, but he was not very flexible on the prices. These were very exceptional bowls. There were the extra thick bowls, the special engraved bowls, the ancient circle and dot bowls, the very thick lingam bowls, the ancient square bowls. I found bowls with deep engravings, golden colors and melodious voices. I found some of the best types I specifically search for and tried to not give away my excitement. It was the single best find of singing bowls in my experience in terms of quantity and quality.
I carefully selected all those with a great sound. I rejected many that looked amazing but did not sound good enough. I chose a large number but it was nothing compared to the quantity I selected in the stockrooms downstairs. This was two small rooms of bowls, not stacked up, compared to six rooms of wall to wall bowls stacked three or four high on shelves up to the ceiling, plus stacks of up to six bowls covering the floor. It took me two weeks to go through all the bowls downstairs and just part of one day to go through the treasure rooms upstairs. The very fine bowls were in much shorter supply. I thought these may be the last like these I would ever find.
We added up my bill again and it was exponentially higher. Even though I chose several times more bowls downstairs, the treasure room bowls were many times more expensive. This is why some bowls are much more expensive than others. While a normal antique may only cost $100 at the source, a great one can cost $10,000. They know what they have is valuable, especially since many items have become extremely expensive. Today you can buy a single dzi bead for $500,000 or more. Bodhi seed malas which used to cost $100 or less now cost $5,000 or more. As more people sought out the antique singing bowls, the prices for the good ones became much higher.
There has never been another singing bowl find like this one. My timing was perfect and I bought all the great pieces. I have enjoyed them for years and you, my customers, are the benefactors of my good bowl karma. Everyone in Nepal and many of my friends here at home say I have a karmic connection with the bowls. One of my old friends summed it up simply, “you and these bowls… it’s something else.”
It really is something else, something I cannot explain. Ever since I asked the question, “what’s a singing bowl?” back in 1998, I have had amazing luck finding singing bowls. I used to joke that I bought a few and they told their relatives, then they all started showing up, coming in through all the doors and windows.
I believe my success has to do with my attitude about the bowls. I just love them and do not feel possessive about them. People have been asking me, “how can you sell these last museum pieces?”
The answer is what I call my “open hand approach” to the singing bowls. Singing bowls do not make a sound if you grip them. If you hold the sides, you stop the vibration. Therefore, you hold them on an open hand to let them vibrate. I have always had the same approach to owning the bowls; I keep them in an open hand. I won’t be here forever, so they will have to move on sometime. I do not hold them back. I want them to be free to sing their beautiful vibrations and I want you to be free to enjoy them, too. So, if you would like to bring some home, now is your opportunity to get the very best singing bowls ever made.
Leave a comment