Falkner · Corporate Anniversary · September 2026 · Loughborough

Two hundred years in tune.

Two worlds for the bicentenary dinner in the moulding shop. One begins in the bell itself — in the single piece of decoration a bell is ever given. The other begins in how a bell is judged, which is not by eye at all. Both are built from the foundry's own vocabulary and nothing borrowed. Choose one and it is built out in full.

Direction A

The Waist

A bell is given exactly one piece of decoration in its life — a ring of capitals cast in relief around its waist — and you cannot read it without walking around the object. This world makes the invitation that ring: type as a physical thing you turn, not a message printed flat.

The tuning bay at eleven at night — two bells finished but not yet agreed, and the one work-light the whole world is lit by.
Foundry black#16181AInk
Verdigris#5E8C7BAccent
The three colours as they actually occur — green coming up through dark metal, sand caught in the turned groove.
F

Type specimen

FALKNER BELL FOUNDRY

display — Fraunces, capitals, tracked +0.14em

Two Hundred Years in Tune

display — Fraunces italic, the one warm voice

SATURDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 2026 · STRIKE E♭

text — Hanken Grotesk, tracked caps, ledger cadence

Serif-led. The band on a bell's waist is Roman capital, so the classical half of the pair leads and the grotesque is kept for data — dates, weights, strike notes.

Deep letterpress into 900gsm black board — struck far enough that a thumb finds the band before the eye does.
Mould sand#E6E2D8Ground
The whole colour budget — a painted hairline on the cut edge, and nowhere else.

What each piece becomes in this world

Invitation
130 × 190mm on 900gsm rigid black board. The band of capitals enters at the left trim a third of the way down and is cut off by the right edge; the sentence finishes on the reverse, so the card has to be turned before it can be read. Letterpress struck deep, verdigris only as a hairline on the cut edge.
Save the Date
A6, same black board, and deliberately almost empty. It carries the strike note of the 1826 bell and the date, set large, with no explanation at all — it is meaningless until the invitation arrives, which is the point.
RSVP Card
The one reversed piece in the suite: sand ground, black ink, so it reads as a form rather than an announcement. The reply line is ruled like a ledger entry, label left and value right, and the guest writes into the column.
Welcome Signage
A 1200mm board at the shop door. The band runs its full length at head height, so a guest walks the sentence instead of turning it — the same idea at architectural scale. Set to hold at six metres in a dark yard.
Custom Monogram
FBF as a struck cipher, blind-debossed with no ink at all, so it is felt before it is seen. It appears once per piece at 12mm, and once at 180mm on the signage where the deboss becomes a shadow.
Event Programme
A single folded leaf. The evening is set as ledger entries — time at the left, event at the right, a hairline between — and it ends with the dawn peal at 5:52 given its own rule above it, so the last thing read is the thing that happens after everyone leaves.

And the two things that are not pieces

Digital
The RSVP page does the one thing paper cannot: the band scrolls horizontally, so the guest reads it by moving it — the turning gesture transposed to a screen. Nothing else on the site moves.
The guest's evening
Arrival at a lit sign in a dark yard; dinner at trestles between the open pits with the bells hanging overhead; and a card in the coat pocket that gives a time before six the next morning.

The hanging bells. The client's own venue note — two finished bells in the tuning bay, the only warm light from the annealing ovens. This is the room as it will actually be, not dressed for guests.

The painted edge. The brief asks for verdigris kept "under a tenth of any surface" — on a bell the green is what weather does to a small part of the metal. An edge is the smallest place it can honestly live.

The cipher. Drawn as rules rather than illustrated, so the mark belongs to the same system as the band. It is struck, never printed — there is no ink in it anywhere.

Sand in the groove. The palette is not chosen, it is observed: dark metal, green patina, foundry sand. All three are already in the room the dinner is held in.

Direction B

Five Partials

A bell is not judged by eye. It is finished when five partials agree — hum, prime, tierce, quint, nominal — and until they do, nothing else about it matters. This world is the tuner's own diagram: five ruled measures on sand stock, flat ink, no relief, nothing to feel. It is the test, not the object.

The shop floor from above — two centuries of broken moulds, swept flat. Every bell the foundry has made passed through this sand.
Mould sand#E6E2D8Ground
Foundry black#16181AInk
Laid out the way a tuner lays out a bench — the iron gauge, the corroded fragment, and the sand both came out of.
Verdigris as flat screen-print sitting down in the tooth of the stock — matte, absorbed, no shine anywhere.
Uncoated sand stock, completely flat — this world has no relief in it at all, on purpose.
Verdigris#5E8C7BAccent
5

Type specimen

Falkner Bell Foundry

display — Hanken Grotesk 600, tight

1826 — 2026 · 41,286 bells · strike E♭

figures — Hanken Grotesk 300, lining, set above the words

Falkner Bell Foundry requests the company of

host line — Fraunces italic, the only warm voice in the world

Sans-led. A tuning sheet is set by an engineer, so the grotesque leads and carries every figure; the serif is rationed to the single line where the company speaks in its own voice rather than reporting a measurement.

What each piece becomes in this world

Invitation
130 × 190mm on uncoated sand stock, flat screen-print. Five ruled measures cross the upper two-thirds and the evening's details are entered against them the way a tuner enters a reading. One measure is verdigris and visibly short — the partial not yet in tune.
Save the Date
A6 sand stock carrying a single measure and a single figure. It is one partial on its own, out of true, with the date entered against it — the rest of the chart arrives later.
RSVP Card
The reply is itself a measure the guest completes: a ruled line running to the right edge with the headcount entered at its end. Returning the card is what brings the last partial into agreement.
Welcome Signage
The five measures at 1600mm, each one a real ruled bar across the board, so the whole thing reads as a chart from across the yard before any word on it is legible. Figures at 90mm cap height.
Custom Monogram
FBF set small and entirely plain, sitting on the lowest measure like a tuner's initials at the foot of a ledger entry. It is never enlarged, never centred, and never given a frame.
Event Programme
The evening as a full tuning sheet: every item on the night is a measure, and each measure's length is proportional to how long that part of the evening lasts — so the shape of the night is visible before a word of it is read. The dawn peal is the longest bar on the sheet.

And the two things that are not pieces

Digital
The RSVP page is the tuning sheet itself, and the guest's reply draws the fifth measure to its full length as it is submitted. That is the only movement on the site.
The guest's evening
Arrival in a yard where the sign reads as a chart; a sheet at every place setting showing the shape of the evening ahead; and a card that has been completed rather than merely kept.

The five measures. Drawn as ruled bars, not illustrated. The fourth is green and short because that is what an untuned partial looks like on a tuner's sheet — the client's own people will read it before anyone else does.

The swept floor. The brief describes a sand floor with four open pits. Photographed from above it stops being a room and becomes a surface — which is what lets it carry type at any scale.

Nothing to feel. The client asked for deep letterpress. This world deliberately refuses it, so the two directions are a real choice about the object and not a choice about finish.

Ink, not stock. The green is printed and absorbed, never a coloured board — so it can be rationed to a single measure rather than owning a whole surface.

Choosing

Two hundred years, told twice.

Choose The Waist if…

You want the evening to be about the object itself — you want a guest to pick the card up, feel the band before they read it, turn it over to finish the sentence, and understand without ever being told that a bell is read by walking around it.

Choose Five Partials if…

You want the evening to be about the standard — you want the invitation to look like the test a bell has to pass, and to be read instantly by two hundred people who judge for a living and will see the short green measure for what it is.

 The WaistFive Partials
What the guest is handedA struck black card that must be turned before it makes senseA pale sheet that reads at once as an instrument reading
Format & stock900gsm rigid black board, deep letterpressUncoated sand stock, flat screen-print, no relief
Where the accent goesA painted hairline on the cut edge, nowhere elseOne of the five measures, printed short
ImageryNone on the piece; dark raking macro around itNone on the piece; daylight documentary around it
TypeFraunces capitals, tracked — the band is the designHanken Grotesk figures lead; words support
The repeatable markA wrapping band of capitals, cut by the trimFive ruled measures at a fixed interval
The risk it carriesA guest who never turns the card reads half a sentenceA card that reads as a document rather than an invitation

Whichever world is chosen is built out in full — the invitation first, then the six pieces translated from it. The other is not carried forward.

Direction A — The Waist — is the world that was built. Every piece in the suite descends from it; Five Partials was not carried forward.

See the finished suite →