Newsletter 19th December 2022  -  Problems seeing this email? Click here to view it online

HIMALAYAN BOWL DEALERS - INSIDER INFORMATION!

It might surprise you to learn that the majority of Himalayan bowl dealers have little or no interest in the bowls they sell beyond their type, size, and weight.  They rarely play them, have no particular interest in their sound quality, and seldom make any attempt to identify their notes.  They take little interest in a bowl's character, its decorative features, or whether or not it carries an inscription, and they don't care if it has talking or fountain abilities.  Their primary concern is that it's not cracked or damaged in any way.

Of course, there are exceptions...Himalayan dealers who care deeply about their bowls, meditate, and offer healing sound baths to interested visitors...but they are very few and far between.  It's a curious and (for us) fortunate fact, that the very qualities that singing bowl dealers ignore are precisely the ones that interest us as collectors, healers, and practicioners!  It is these subtle differences that make each bowl uniquely special.

Only a handful of international collectors and retailers actually travel to the Himalayas to source their stock in person.  The vast majority of singing bowls offered for sale in the West (or elsewhere) have been purchased remotely online or by email, often unseen, from bowl dealers in India and Nepal.  Sadly, many of the bowls bought in this way have suffered years of neglect or abuse as domestic storage or cooking vessels, and are consequently of inferior quality.  One needs to buy in person to find quality antique bowls...and that's why I make 3 trips annually to Nepal.

Bowl dealers do not actually source the bowls themselves. They buy them from people who scour remote mountain villages for them, sometimes for weeks or months at a time, before returning to the city with a jute sack or two of bowls.  All the big city dealers have bowl hunters on their payroll, although some are independent and free to sell and negotiate prices with whomsoever they wish. Their bowls are roughly sorted and weighed by the dealer, and paid for at a price per kilo according to type and size.

The city dealer then further sorts them into various categories such as bowl type, size, age and condition, and assigns a different kilo price to each category.  They nearly always buy and sell by weight, at a price per kilo.  This is true whether they are average or inferior-quality bowls to be sold in street markets, online platforms such as eBay, and retails shops...or rare antique museum-quality specimens destined for international dealers with high-end outlets and online stores.  The only exceptions to the kilo price are when singing bowls form a tiny part of a local trader's business, or when a dealer decides he can get more for his superior specimens by offering them on a price-per-piece basis.

Some bowl types have sub-categories.  For example, there will be one price for Jambati bowls with a diameter under 10 inches, another for bowls between 10 and 12 inches, and yet another for 12 inches and over.  The kilo price for huge 13 or 14 inch Jambati bowls, because of their scarcity, could easily be triple that of the 10 inch bowls.  And bowls forged with extra-thick walls could easlily be twice the weight of those with thin walls, and therefore double the cost!  A very large and extra-thick (heavy) antique Jambati bowl might well cost £1,500 ($1,825) today in Kathmandu or Delhi, and a rare Lingam considerably more!  Furthermore, air freight charges are based on weight, so heavier bowls will incur higher costs when shipping to Europe and the USA.

This explains why two seemingly identical bowls of the same type, dimension, age and quality, might be offered for sale in the West at vastly different prices.  In my own case I attempt to average them out to make the heavier bowls more affordable (as a user there are pros and cons with both light and heavy bowls).  However, there are many other variables that might also account for a significant price difference even between two bowls with exactly the same dimensions and weight.  It could simply be because an Eb2 fundamental is rarer than a G#2 or perhaps because one bowl is perfect pitch and the other is not.

As a specialist collector and importer one might be tempted to save money and purchase only the lighter bowls, but nowadays competition among dealers is so fierce for genuine antiques, especially the rare large ones, that those Himalayan dealers fortunate enough to have some will often insist you buy all their stock or none at all...leaving one with no choice but to buy mixed weights and mixed quality...or go without!  This fact alone is enough to discourage all but the wealthiest of international buyers because their outlay could easily be in excess of £10,000 ($12,350) spent with each of the dealers visited.  There have been several occasions when I have had to buy 10 expensive ok bowls in order to secure the 2 or 3 gems that I really want.  Antique singing bowls are my passion and I am willing to pay more than anyone else to secure an exceptional or unique specimen.  Fortunately the fact that I am a reliable, regular returning customer puts me at a distinct advantage over the competion and I often get advance notice of new finds.

Like dealers worldwide, most Himalayan singing bowl dealers trade among themselves until all the biggest and rarest specimens end up in the hands of those at the top of the dealer tree in Kathmandu or Delhi.  In fact a half dozen or so top Himalayan dealers have effectively cornered the international bowl market and sell exclusively to Western collectors and dealers, and never to the public.

In recent years antique singing bowls have become big business, and I personally know several Himalayan dealers who have built multi-million dollar empires off the back of their bowl sales.  Their business premises may appear modest or even a little squalid, but they holiday abroad, drive luxury motors and live in five-storey mansions! 

Fred Wilkinson © all rights reserved.