Making Olympic timekeepers’ bells a labour of love – Swiss bellmaker

The air is stifling hot, with a heavy, metallic smell that sticks in the throat and stings the eyes. In his foundry with smoke-blackened walls, Alois Huguenin uses an enormous ladle to pour molten bronze at 1,250 degrees Celsius (2,282 degrees Fahrenheit) into a metal frame. For three generations, the century-old traditional foundry in La