Singing Bowl - Antique Singing Bowls

Antique Singing Bowls

Antique singing bowls produce harmonic overtones creating an effect that is unique to the instrument. The subtle yet complex multiple harmonic frequencies are a special quality caused by variations in the shape of the hand made singing bowls. The art of making singing bowls in the traditional way is often called a lost art, but traditional craftsmen still make singing bowls in the traditional manner. They are one of the longest made traditional objects still being made today.

Antique singing bowls are highly prized and collected worldwide, due to their fine craftsmanship and remarkable sound. They may display abstract decorations like lines, rings and circles engraved into the surface. Decoration may appear outside the rim, inside the bottom, around the top of the rim and sometimes on the outside bottom.

Very few antique singing bowls are available today. Many websites sell new singing bowls and call them "old" or "antique" without any real information about the age. Some sellers say the age is unknown or use vague terms such as "old" or "antique." The issue is complicated because most singing bowls for sale are new but may look similar to real antiques. They are often sold at the source in Asia as "old" and Western sellers pass on this misinformation to consumers. Most sellers are simply merchants with no real knowledge of the objects, so there is a lot of misinformation about these objects on the web. Like other antique objects, singing bowls can easily be dated by experienced experts. However, there are very few real experts.

Singing bowl researcher Joseph Feinstein and Oxford University recently conducted a joint study and concluded that singing bowls have been made in the Himalayan region for at least 600–800 years, and are likely related to bronze bowls produced in Central and Western Asia. Extensive metallurgical analysis by Feinstein's company Himalayan Bowls and Oxford University has discovered that the bowls are made from "high tin bronze," also known as "bell metal bronze," which is a pure mixture of copper and tin. Contrary to popular folklore, there is no evidence to support the claims that singing bowls contain "7 metals" (Joseph Feinstein, 2011).