Litex Bell Foundry, Moscow

1800-lb, 840-kg bell, copied from a bell saved from Christ the Savior Cathedral.

6-ton bell for the Dormition Church of the Svyatogorsky Monastery in Ukraine.

Any traveling zvonar would be happy to work with a set like this!

Bells exhibited at the Jaroslavl' Bell Fair, 1999.

Dr. Artyom Engoian (left), Director of the Litex Foundry, along with members of the Pyatkov team (Nikolai Pyatkov is in front right), at the Jaroslavl Bell Festival in 1999.

Winner of the Most Beautiful Bell award at the Jaroslavl' Bell Festival, 1999.

Metropolitan Herman of the Orthodox Church in America and Archimandrite Juvenaly with the Litex bell donated to St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was destroyed in the plane-bombing of the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11/2001.

Archbishop Demetrios and Fr. Juvenaly inspect the new bell for St Nicholas Church.

Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese discussing the new bell with OCA clergy.

The

The new bell for New York's St Nicholas Church.

The Litex Bell Foundry was established when the A.I. Tselikov All-Russian Metallurgical Machinery Research & Design Institute (VNIIMETMASH) foundry, established in 1944, was privatized as a separate entity in 1991. The foundry, which has decades of precision casting experience behind it, is capable of producing up to 35 tons of bells per year.

The bell profiles follow the classic examples of Olovanishnikov of Jaroslavl' and Finlyandski of Moscow (both 19th century).

The foundry casts bells using the lost-wax process and fine ceramic moulds, which allows for the extreme precision in profile, and exquisite iconography, inscription, and decoration. We think of Litex as the "Fabergé" of foundries.

The Director of the foundry is Dr. Artyom Engoian, whose specialty is metallurgical engineering, and its Master Founder is Andrei Alexeivich Bychkov.

The sculptor who makes the beautiful iconography is Oleg Vladimirovich Shirokov of Penza, in the Russian north.

Litex casts bells from just 4 kg all the way up to 6000 kg, and from 17.5 cm (as big as your fist) to 220 cm (7 feet) in diameter, with strike tones from C of the 3rd octave above Middle C, to F of the 1st octave below.

Litex has supplied bells for more than 400 churches and monasteries in Russia and abroad, including Diveevo Monastery at Borodino, the Church of St George the Trophy-Bearer on Poklonaya Hill in Moscow (an important memorial to the victory and to the heros of World War II); Peter and Paul at Prokhorovka (the largest battlefield in world history); the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery in Zvenigorod (where the Great Ouspensky bell once resided); Novospassky Monastery in Moscow, Dormition Church of the Svyatogorsky Monastery in Ukraine, and many, many others— indeed from Vladivostok in the far east to Ukraine in the far west, and from Surgut in the far north to Stavropol in the far south.

In 1996, Litex made a new bronze reliquary for Ss Sergius and Herman of Valaam, at Valaam Monastery.

Litex is the winner of many Russian bell exhibitions.

Litex considers its bells to be not just products, but instruments for the divine services. This attitude explains the high standards that the masters have for their bells.