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The 10-string fairy bells seems to have been the most popular. For example, the instruments in the Bate Museum, the Horniman Museum and in the Edinburgh Collections are all 10-string models.
Here are three photographs of the 10-string fairy bells made by Van Gruisen of Liverpool and many thanks to Andrew Lamb for getting this instrument out of storage, and allowing me to take these photographs.
Fairy bells in the Bate Museum
The same instrument upside down. As usual, the tuning pin planks are glued and screwed.
A view from the front.
The next two instruments are in the Horniman Museum and thanks to the Museum for allowing me to examine them. The top one was made by the piano manufacturer John A. Mills (active 1890-1910?)
Two fairy bells instruments in the Horniman Museum. John. A Mills (top) and Anon,
In the 1870s R.W. Cook made three models, 8-string, 10-string and 17-string. Here is the playing area of the 17-string model.
R.W. Cook 17-string model.
The player can play this in the same way as a more typical 10-string instrument but can move the thumbs forward to play the intervening chromatic notes. The chromatic notes are all indicated as sharps (no flats).
The 8-string model was popular too. The instrument in the next photograph belonged to members of the Till Family who toured Britain and the USA with their 'rock harmonicon', a large xylophone-type instrument made of rocks from Skiddaw. Their performances included other instruments too.
8-string fairy bells now in the MET Museum in New York.
This next instrument is very unusual. It is a fairy bells with a separate soundboard. It is an 8-string model and the two tuning pin planks are closer together than usual so that there is not a great difference in string length across the range of the instrument.
8-string fairy bells with a soundboard
On the left is an even more radical disposition of the tuning pin planks. At first glance it is a typical 10-string instrument. (Like some other fairy bells instruments it has the remnants of a strap to help support the hands for swinging).
It has a metal 'saddle' on the bridge, rather than a carved bridge, which is fairly common.
It is the disposition of the tuning pin planks that is very odd. Normally, on these instruments, the string lengths get progressively shorter, at first left-right and then right-left. But not in this case. If this instrument has the typical tuning,
C D E F G E D C B A
the lowest note, C and the sixth above, A have the same string lengths (etc). Perhaps different string gauges could accommodate this design or perhaps this instrument was tuned in some other way.
Fairy bells with more than 10-strings (or 10+7 strings) existed too. Here is a 14-string fairy bells.
14-string fairy bells
Fairy bells come up for sale every so often. Two were sold by Gardiner Houlgate a couple of years ago and were listed as fairy bells, not as bell harps.
I have two 10-string instruments, both bought locally. In each case the seller had no idea what the instrument was.
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