ufip
AN ANCIENT ITALIAN CRAFT
Bronze working in the area around Pistoia in Italy can be traced back nearly 4,000 years to the Etruscans. Centuries later, during the 1700s, the Tronci family were using bronze in pipe organs. They had a long tradition of bell making dating back to the Renaissance and, by the 1800s, they had expanded into chimes, bells and cymbals with the demise of large pipe organs. The great Italian opera composers such as Puccini, Verdi and Mascagni commissioned large gongs and tam-tams for their operas (e.g. Puccini uses large tuned gongs in Turandot).
The current range of UFIP gongs and tam-tams are made from either cast bronze (B20) or from rolled sheets of bronze (B8) or brass. Generally, instruments up to 28”/71cm in diameter are made from bronze and from 32″/81cm diameter from brass. Forming the gongs from either casting or from rolled metal sheets involves hammering as well as lathing techniques.