The Hampshire College Lemelson Center

The Blacksmith played a vital role in society for centuries, being as everyday a fixture as a doctor or a carpenter. With the advent of the Industrial Age, the village blacksmith became less visible, even fading from the community altogether. However, the trade has been seeing a quiet resurgence over the last century as people seek to reconnect with their past, learn a time-honored skill, or own a hand crafted, unique creation, fashioned by man instead of factory.

This blacksmithing revival is not just occurring in the United States. Alum Jacob Lefton has spent much of the past year travelling throughout Europe, attending blacksmithing festivals, apprenticing in shops, and talking to smiths from the far reaches of the continent. What he discovered on his journey was a vibrant cultural tapestry, infused with the traditions of many countries and held together by fire and metal.

Jacob uses the gas forge during a recent visit to the Lemelson Center.

While still a student at Hampshire, Jacob heard about an annual artist blacksmith festival in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, which unfortunately always took place during finals week. Following graduation, Jacob emailed the festival organizers, and they invited him to attend. He was also offered an apprenticeship with a blacksmith in Crimea, on the other side of the country. Leaving in the spring of 2009, Jacob arrived in Ukraine and immediately met up with Finnish, Belgian and English blacksmiths. Following the festival, Jacob toured several cities, meeting about 120 smiths from 20 countries. “I got to see a lot of amazing blacksmithing work,” he said. In addition to his first apprenticeship, Jacob received many invites to work in blacksmith shops. “It was a very open and welcoming community. If you were there, you were a part of the blacksmithing family. It didn’t matter if you were a professional or not.”

Jacob worked in a total of 10 blacksmith shops, circling Europe and stopping in England, Sweden, Finland, France, and Italy. He attended several festivals, including a world forging championship in Italy. Blacksmithing apprenticeships are still practiced in places like Germany, where a journeyman smith can knock on a family’s door and receive food and lodging for the night. “It’s an integral part of the craft, because it cross pollinates it,” Lefton says of the apprenticeship system. “The techniques cross fertilize and become stronger and better. For anyone who’s looking to do blacksmithing, I highly recommend it. You have to work in other shops. You can’t work in a vacuum.”

One challenge that Jacob encountered was the language barrier. “It was exciting,” he said. “I never had that before.” A creative writer, he took many notes and wrote some short fiction to keep his mind busy in places where he couldn’t speak the language. However, despite having different cultural, religious, and ideological backgrounds, the smiths were always able to find common ground in their work. “When they got together to forge, they were blacksmiths, and they had a common language.”

Lefton was impressed by the intensity with which the blacksmithing renaissance is happening in countries like Ukraine. “They’ve put in a lot of work to growing the craft and the art,” he says, noting that artistic blacksmithing declined precipitously during the Communist era, but has rebounded. “There are hundreds of blacksmith shops in a country where there was no economic incentive or support at all. There was no blacksmithing industry 20 years ago. Now it’s all over the place.”

A gate that Jacob built for a park while travelling in Ukraine.

As for his own blacksmithing goals, Jacob would like to focus on large ornamental sculpture such as gates and chandeliers. “I’ve learned how to look at and think about forged ironwork in a technical and artistic way,” he says. “I saw work that took advantage of forging in in ways I never thought possible. It really broadened my understanding of the craft.” Drawing on his literary background, he will be guest editing the Autumn 2010 issue of Artist Blacksmith, the publication put out by the British Artist Blacksmiths Association (BABA). “One of my dreams is to be able to take in apprentices and journeyman, and to support young people learning and travelling. It was really inspiring to see how this community operates.”