Alexander Grigoriev

Alexander Grigoriev, son of Lykov (Russian: Александр Григорьев сын Лыков) (1634? - after 1676) was a Russian cannon and bellfounder.

In 1651, Alexander Grigoriev was accepted to the Moscow Cannon Yard as a "bell person" (колокольное лицо) at the recommendation of a bellmaker Yemelyan Danilov and a number of Muscovite cannonmakers. Soon, Grigoriev was given seven apprentices, with whom he would recast the Annunciation Bell (Благовестный колокол) for the Church of Saint Antipius in Moscow and cast six spare alarm bells for other fortresses. In 1654, Alexander Grigoriev and Feodor Motorin were sent to Novgorod, where they would cast a 16-ton bell for the Saint Sophia Cathedral. Their assignment in Novgorod allowed them to escape the fate of some 150,000 Muscovites, who would die from bubonic plague that year.

Upon his return to Moscow in 1655, Grigoriev succeeded to the deceased Yemelyan Danilov and continued his work on creating the most important bell in the country, namely the Big Assumption Bell (some 160 tons), which had been shattered before during a religious celebration. Grandiose work on casting of this bell took place in the Moscow Kremlin from May until late fall. Many of Grigoriev's apprentices took part in this assignment, some of whom would become famous bellmakers themselves (Khariton Ivanov, Pyotr Stepanov, Fyodor Dmitriyev). The Big Assumption Bell would only be hung in 1668 in a custom-built wooden belltower. The bell was lost in a Kremlin fire in 1701. Its metal was later used for the casting of the Tsar Bell.

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