One of the most sought after and mythologized of all the singing bowls, this special type of singing bowl is one of the oldest and longest produced. I call them simply the “circle and dot” bowls, after the punched pattern found around the rim and sometimes on the inside of the bowls.
The circle and dot bowls have been called by different names, all made up. There is no specific name for these bowls in Asia. The decorative pattern has been mythologized by sellers as well, said to signify the female “yoni” energy or to symbolize the unity of the cosmos. Such tales are what I call “selling stories,” myths made up to sell the bowls. I know of no specific symbolism or meaning attached to the decorative pattern.
However, my historical work has revealed other secrets about the circle and dot punch. When I did my metallurgical research with Oxford in 2010, they informed me that certain types of bowls are related to ancient Persian bowls.
When I researched those bowls, I found something surprising; some of them have the same circle and dot pattern, applied in exactly the same way around the rim and the inside bottom.
The circle and dot bowls are one of the key connections to understanding the history of singing bowls. They are direct descendents of the Persian bowls. They not only share the same decorative pattern. They were made with the same heating, hammering, folding and finishing techniques.
The circle and dot bowls were one of the first where I recognized the fold separation that occurs in very old bowls. The rim is folded outward, hammered around the top and blended into the outside of the bowl. By hammering around the seam, the makers made it disappear, effectively smoothing and sealing the metal with heat and hammering.
However, hammering the fold seam was not enough. The punch engravings provided an extra fine seal. The circle and dot design was therefore not only decorative. It served a purpose of making the final seal on the fold seam, a step they may have found necessary for longevity of the seam. It became a part of bowl construction for a few hundred years, being abandoned when the folding process was also abandoned.
The circle and dot singing bowls were not uncommon. I believe this style may have been the most common type of bowl during their time. Many have been found in the last 30 years. They show a remarkable similarity in style even while the construction methods changed over the centuries.
We find the circle and dot pattern remaining on transitional and later period bowls. Besides a plain line, it is the most common and longest used decorative pattern on any singing bowl.
The circle and dot pattern was also found on some Manipuri bowls, a completely different style of bowl. This likely means that the same shop made different types of bowls. It could also mean that the circle and dot punch was copied or shared.
Since the pattern is found on at least three types of historic bowls; the Persian bowls, the thado bati singing bowls and the manipuri singing bowls, it may be that multiple makers were able to reproduce the design. It is also likely that bowl makers received their tools from tool makers.
There may have been a tool maker who invented this pattern or perhaps a historic punch was passed down from one maker to another. I wish we knew more about the tools themselves and how they migrated. Did someone carry a tool from Persia to Asia? Did tool makers copy the patterns they saw?
The decorative patterns are one of the keys that help me understand the history of the bowls. The circle and dot pattern is perhaps the most important pattern because it makes a direct connection to the earlier Persian bowls. It is one of the ways I was able to connect the culture to the metallurgy.
When we see so many correlations between different types of bowls, such connections are extremely helpful. It helps corroborate the history, since we have the same metallurgy, hammering techniques and decorative patterns overlapping.
What do you think about this intriguing part of singing bowl history? Please leave your questions and comments below.
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