Re-Activating Craft, MA Material Futures: Central Saint Martins (October to December 2024). This is a challenge of discovery, connoisseurship, intervention and refinement. Explore and discover this craft from the inside out. Experience and explore skills and practices which you are not familiar with but which require a high level of training and refinement. Become a connoisseur of this craft. Infiltrate its world and become at one with its materials, experts and experiences. Engage with, visit, learn from and collaborate with expert crafters. Create an intervention that disrupts the traditional craft systems, that may change, challenge, revive, restore, rethink or develop this craft. Re-Activating Craft, MA Material Futures: Central Saint Martins (October to December 2024). This is a challenge of discovery, connoisseurship, intervention and refinement. Explore and discover this craft from the inside out. Experience and explore skills and practices which you are not familiar with but which require a high level of training and refinement. Become a connoisseur of this craft. Infiltrate its world and become at one with its materials, experts and experiences. Engage with, visit, learn from and collaborate with expert crafters. Create an intervention that disrupts the traditional craft systems, that may change, challenge, revive, restore, rethink or develop this craft. Re-Activating Craft, MA Material Futures: Central Saint Martins (October to December 2024). This is a challenge of discovery, connoisseurship, intervention and refinement. Explore and discover this craft from the inside out. Experience and explore skills and practices which you are not familiar with but which require a high level of training and refinement. Become a connoisseur of this craft. Infiltrate its world and become at one with its materials, experts and experiences. Engage with, visit, learn from and collaborate with expert crafters. Create an intervention that disrupts the traditional craft systems, that may change, challenge, revive, restore, rethink or develop this craft. Re-Activating Craft, MA Material Futures: Central Saint Martins (October to December 2024). This is a challenge of discovery, connoisseurship, intervention and refinement. Explore and discover this craft from the inside out. Experience and explore skills and practices which you are not familiar with but which require a high level of training and refinement. Become a connoisseur of this craft. Infiltrate its world and become at one with its materials, experts and experiences. Engage with, visit, learn from and collaborate with expert crafters. Create an intervention that disrupts the traditional craft systems, that may change, challenge, revive, restore, rethink or develop this craft. Re-Activating Craft, MA Material Futures: Central Saint Martins (October to December 2024). This is a challenge of discovery, connoisseurship, intervention and refinement. Explore and discover this craft from the inside out. Experience and explore skills and practices which you are not familiar with but which require a high level of training and refinement. Become a connoisseur of this craft. Infiltrate its world and become at one with its materials, experts and experiences. Engage with, visit, learn from and collaborate with expert crafters. Create an intervention that disrupts the traditional craft systems, that may change, challenge, revive, restore, rethink or develop this craft. Re-Activating Craft, MA Material Futures: Central Saint Martins (October to December 2024). This is a challenge of discovery, connoisseurship, intervention and refinement. Explore and discover this craft from the inside out. Experience and explore skills and practices which you are not familiar with but which require a high level of training and refinement. Become a connoisseur of this craft. Infiltrate its world and become at one with its materials, experts and experiences. Engage with, visit, learn from and collaborate with expert crafters. Create an intervention that disrupts the traditional craft systems, that may change, challenge, revive, restore, rethink or develop this craft.


  1. The Clapper  
  2. Prototype and fabrication
  3. Collection of research
  4. Whitechapel Bell Foundry

            Materials Listening

            Antoine Léger

Collection of research



As part of my exploration, I visited Taylor’s Bellfoundry in Loughborough, the last operational bell foundry in the United Kingdom. Since its establishment in 1859, the foundry has cast over 25,000 bells, which are installed in more than 100 countries worldwide. 





I had the chance to observe bell ringers in action inside the bell tower of St. Bartholomew the Great during a wedding. The church's five bells, originally cast in 1510, were retuned in 1952 by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Authentic bell tuning involves manually chipping the bell's edge to adjust its pitch by ear, while modern mechanical tuning uses precision tools and acoustic analysis for consistent and accurate results.





Inspiring work and useful resources included: “Andrei Rublev: Bell. 1423.” Andrei Tarkovsky (1966); “Ear to the Ground” David Van Tieghem (1981); “Time and Tide Bells” Marcus Vergette (2008); “La résonance des corps” Béchard Hudon (2016); “Encyclopédie Diderot et d’Alembert” Denis Diderot, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert and Louis de Jaucourt (1751-1782); “Dove’s Guide for Church Bell Ringers” Ronald H. Dove (1998).
   
© Antoine Léger 2025