Fourteen generations, from the Ötztal to Innsbruck.

Grassmayr’s tagline, on its own website, is simply a date: “Seit 1599 werden von der Glockengießerei GRASSMAYR Glocken gegossen” — bells have been cast by the Grassmayr foundry since 1599. The German Wikipedia records that in 1599 Bartlmä Grassmayr cast his first bells at the Heidenhaus in Habichen, near Oetz in Tyrol’s Ötztal valley, and so “legte … den Grundstein” — laid the foundation — of the family trade.

In 1836 the foundry moved to Innsbruck, to Wilten, at the Ansitz Straßfried; its address today is Leopoldstraße 53, where the bells are still cast. The family is now in its fourteenth generation. The brothers Johannes and Peter Grassmayr run the company, sons of the former owner Christof Grassmayr, who runs the bell museum.

One name trap for researchers: the German Wikipedia also lists a separate Grassmayr foundry in Feldkirch, in Vorarlberg, which operated from 1791 to 1914. It is a different business and is long closed; this guide is about the Innsbruck foundry.

A museum inside a working foundry.

The company is Grassmayr Glockengießerei GmbH, a private limited company. The German Wikipedia gave it about 40 employees and revenue of about €3.1 million in 2013, and the company says it exports to “100 countries.” It describes its craft as a family secret: the “Geheimnis jeder Glockenrippe” — the secret of each bell’s profile, or rib — passed from owner to heir.

The foundry itself has stood at Leopoldstraße in Innsbruck’s Wilten district since 1836. Since 1993 the foundry building has also housed the Glockenmuseum Grassmayr, so visitors can see a working bell foundry and a museum at the same address, in the city where the family has cast bells for nearly two centuries. The museum has received the Austrian Museum Prize; we did not confirm the year.

Its large bells are recent and far-flung. In 2016 it cast the Andreasglocke, 25,190 kg, for the People’s Salvation Cathedral in Bucharest; in 2012 the Taborglocke, 15,684 kg, for Mount Tabor; and the CREDAMUS bell, about 14,100 kg, for Magdeburg Cathedral. It is often described as among Austria’s oldest family businesses; we report that as a description rather than a verified ranking.

Fourteen generations is a long chain for any business, and the family has kept the two halves of the firm in different hands: Johannes and Peter Grassmayr run the foundry, while their father, Christof, runs the museum. For comparison, Paccard in France counts seven generations since 1796, and Eijsbouts in the Netherlands four or five since 1872, only casting its own bells from 1947.

Copper, tin and the ringers.

Bell metal is a bronze of roughly four parts copper to one of tin — “approximately 78% copper and 22% tin,” according to the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America, “heated in a furnace to above 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.” Heritage Crafts gives the furnace temperature as 1,200 degrees Celsius.

In 2022 UNESCO inscribed manual bell ringing in Spain on its Representative List, and in 2024 extended it to Italy, describing it as “a form of communication that is tied to the classification, acoustics and shapes of bells, bell towers and belfries.” We found no UNESCO listing for bell casting itself.

Tin is the scarce ingredient. The US Geological Survey estimates world tin mine output at about 290,000 tonnes in 2025, led by China, Indonesia, Peru, Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and says “The estimated annual average New York dealer price for refined tin in 2025 was 1,600 cents per pound, a 13% increase compared with that in 2024.” The same survey notes that “Tin has not been mined or smelted in the United States since 1993 or 1989, respectively,” and that the US relied on imports for about 77 per cent of its refined tin in 2025. In Britain, Heritage Crafts lists bell founding as “critically endangered,” saying it now “takes place almost solely in Loughborough” at John Taylor & Co.

UNESCO has recognised the music of bells. In 2014 it selected Belgium’s programme for “Safeguarding the carillon culture” for its Register of Good Safeguarding Practices, noting that the programme “exists in seventy-six cities and villages of Belgium and in thirty countries worldwide.”

A date older than most nations.

Grassmayr writes its name in capitals in its tagline, and leads with the year. For a brand, 1599 does more work than any slogan could: it predates most of the states its bells are sold to. The museum turns that history into something visitors can walk through, inside the building where the bells are still cast. Few brands can show customers both their archive and their production line in one visit.

For a design guide, Grassmayr is the purest case in this round of a family name, a place and a date carrying the whole brand. It needs no slogan beyond the year — written, in its own tagline, in full capitals beside the name — no ownership story beyond the family, and no claim about where its bells are made beyond the address in Innsbruck. The contrast with London is sharp: Whitechapel, with a traditional date of 1570, closed its foundry in 2017, while Grassmayr’s, dated to 1599, still casts. Compare Paccard, two centuries younger and also family-run, and Whitechapel, an older English name whose foundry has closed.

Its bells are also its best advertisements, especially the largest of them. The Andreasglocke in Bucharest, cast in 2016 at more than 25 tonnes for a new national cathedral, and the Taborglocke for Mount Tabor in 2012, carry the name to places far from Tyrol, and to congregations who will never visit Innsbruck.

In 2014 UNESCO selected Belgium’s programme for “Safeguarding the carillon culture” for its Register of Good Safeguarding Practices, noting that the programme “exists in seventy-six cities and villages of Belgium and in thirty countries worldwide.” Grassmayr’s work sits in the same European tradition of bell music, whether its bells are rung by hand or played from a keyboard.

For this guide we use a bronze and an alpine stone with a serif, an unofficial interpretation. No bell, rib profile or logo is reproduced.

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