The sites are listed in order by year of installation (unknown first).
Following the year is an indication of the founder's contribution to the instrument:
trad - carillon with traditional keyboard non-trad - carillon with non-traditional mechanism mech? - carillon with unknown mechanism chime - chime (any mechanism)NOTE: This index initially included only installations in the Americas. It is currently being expanded to have a wider geographic coverage.
GUADALAJARA : MEXICO 1??? C non-trad Cathedral TOKYO - N : JAPAN 1??? C non-trad Nihombasji Building AARHUS : DENMARK - J 1964 E trad Rådhus (Town Hall)
Rincker Glocken- und Kunstgiesserei Wetzlarer Strasse 13 D-35764 Sinn Germany Tel: (0 27 72) 94 06-0 Fax: (0 27 72) 94 06-40 E: info@rincker.deThe foundry's name translates to "Rincker Bell- and Artfoundry", and its history reaches back to 1590. It has been a major source of bells in Germany for most of that time, but only occasionally has exported bells elsewhere. A Website at www.rincker.de has been under construction for more than two years. The foundry has a subsidiary named Lauchhammer in northeastern Germany.
One of the bellfounders from this family, Henry W. Rincker (probably baptised as Heinrich), emigrated to the USA in 1846 and set up a bellfoundry in Chicago, Illinois. He cast some notable bells for that city, but left there in the late 1850s to attend the Lutheran seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Upon graduation, he was called to became the pastor of a Lutheran church in Terre Haute, Indiana, and was ordained. After occasionally preaching at churches in Shelby County, Illinois, in the early 1860s, he resigned his pastorate in Terre Haute in 1864 on grounds of ill health. But in 1865 he was called to become the first pastor of a newly-formed Lutheran church in the small town of Sigel, in Shelby County. In 1866-67 he was "called to St.Louis," Missouri, to make (or re-make) bells for some Lutheran churches in that area; at least nine are known to have been made then. He made a bell for the Sigel church in 1875, although by then he was no longer the pastor there; He was also a prosperous farmer, and in the 1880s was described as a "retired farmer". He died in 1889; none of his eight children followed the bellfounding trade.
Return to Indexes to bellfoundries.
This index page was built from the database on 02-Jul-01 and last updated on 20-Feb-08.
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