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Decorative Iron and Metalwork - R. Goodwin-Smith
Sheffield."
INTRODUCTION . . . .
My friend, the Smith, sowed the seed of this book. I now recall many a happy hour spent in his village forge, with the musical ding of the hammer, or the hoarse roar of the bellows in my ears.
This old friend of mine has won fame with his gift for conjuring iron into sheer poetry ; he has a veritable genius for cajoling metal into butterflies, roses, and proud peacocks with spreading tails. Yet he, the artist, was ready always to show me patiently all the inner magic of his ancient craft, from the simplest weld to feats calling forth every power of the Smith.
Ding......ding......ding...... From his anvil shower on shower of sparks would leap. Then he would pause and lay against his pipe-bowl a bit of flushing iron, sending forth a fragrant cloud of blue as he initiated me into some mystery of craftsmanship.
The modern Smith is strangely like the strong, rugged, sincere Smith of history and tradition ; perhaps the habit of bending stern metal to one’s will penetrates deep into the character. Iron is curious stuff, with feminine qualities. Even if it is cold and resisting, it becomes, once you contrive to heat it, surprisingly malleable. Then you must act, for once the heat has died, there is your iron, as stubborn as ever.
When I first met my friend, I was designing much period furniture and panelling. A modern designer finds himself often among old houses, furniture, and ironwork, and at the time I was wondering how best I could restore some historic work in the North of the British Isles. I keenly welcomed his aid in adding to my collection of designs for iron gates, hinges, and latches ; and he deepened my understanding of the methods of the old-world Smith.
An early broadcast on Antiques submerged me under shoals of letters inquiring about old craftsmanship, particularly letters of the kind which enclosed a photograph of a decayed and wormed Victorian chair, and asked whether this heirloom, bestowed by Great-grandmother on an ungrateful family, might not be Louis Quinze, and worth something.
Other letters came through my articles in England and America, many of the inquiries being anent old metal, and ticklish ones at that. In grappling with these, I made friends with yet other living Smiths, and as I listened to them, my love of the glorious old craft of iron began to grow and flourish like a young sapling.
During my rambles abroad, ironwork again captured my imagination. How many folk have noticed the lovely wrought-iron balconies of modern Paris, the lace-like gates and grilles of old Spain ? . . . And in Cairo I met something of the fantastic iron embroidery that is the metalcraft of the East.
Certainly no student should be content with the metal of England alone. England’s own inspiration came from Italy and the Near East. Any connoisseur who takes a Cunard-White Star or Lloyd Triestino cruise around the Mediterranean ports will add a great deal to his studies of metal.
Yet somehow, England has taken the beautiful essence of the brilliant Continental decorative ideas, and, after shearing away much fantasy and extravagance, made them her own. Her ironwork, like her furniture, is seldom wild and unrestrained ; it reflects something of the sober English character.
A modern designer must often create metal-work which will harmonise with old panelling and interiors. I was always on the look out for any charming old latch or hinge that one might light on at a Tudor or Jacobean mansion. Where I found them, I would delightedly take a rubbing or a tracery. This collection soon grew vastly ; much of it is here. I now felt an impulse to assemble the unusual pieces and explain them. I knew that many of them would be sheer gold to designers hunting wearily through stock museum specimens for inspiration. I knew that my collection was, in its way, unique, especially since it consisted so largely of small handles, hinges, and other light items of ironwork, which have rarely had a book devoted to them.
Americans, too, were very keen about iron, old and new. A gentleman of Massachusetts wrote asking me to keep an eye open for unusual bits of English wrought-iron with which he could adorn his Tudor-style residence ! Other Americans asked for carved oak beams, to be despatched to them across the Big Pond ; others for fire-backs, stone mantels, fire-dogs, . . .
Of all the ironwork that I thus met, the old stuff most fascinated me. I was growing to understand the phases of the old-world Smith, particularly in his early work, where his metal was red or white as he worked it, and where he depended entirely upon his quick eye and sure hammer. He did not always achieve dead accuracy, but the work was human, and full of the fire of inspiration. Craftsmanship, in its best sense. The patron got the fire-dogs, or the gates; but the Smith did all the work and got all the fun.
Nor has the Smith changed down the long lanes of the centuries. I met him, watched him work, enjoyed his Old-English hospitality and home-made wine—and learned a lot.
Often there would be some little genuine hinge saved for my collection, or some intriguing process delayed till I could come and witness it, in the picturesque and blackened forge, where would stand a gate composed of lacey arabesques, like the swirling music of Chopin. The Smith, rough-hewn, would stand, the folds of his leather apron slashed with lights from the fires, and in the evening’s uncertain gloom the iron would glow like a jewel, snapping out sparks of light like minute meteors....
Let the reader, as an introduction, survey the butterfly gate on Plate 102 (top right). It is beautiful. Created by a village Smith, and here are two more specimens—a sconce in Adam style, Plate 85 (bottom left), and an amazingly delicate spray of roses, Plate 133 (bottom left), all hammered out by hand—a masterpiece by a Smith living to-day.
Oh, yes, we still have craftsmen—and we still have lovers of craftsmanship.
In many villages, the forge seemed the only spot left of a lovable, old-time England, in an ugly encroaching sea of petrol-pumps and shoddy bungalows. Some of these commercial jerry-builders will assuredly go to perdition !
Old-world cottages, whose merest latch or hinge had loveliness and merit, are crowded out of existence by bungalows, built without pleasure or interest, for clerks who toil without pleasure or interest ; mass-production homes for mass-production men and women.
Why cannot we develop our old traditions in building and craftsmanship ? It costs no more to design a cottage of beauty than one of tame modern vulgarity.
We are tired of the wanton ugliness of this age, its machine-made homes and ideals. This book is for people who have time for living, for looking around at the beauties of existence—folk who can find wonder in the life of a bee, or in a bit of iron quaintly fashioned by a country Smith three hundred years ago.
And now let me introduce you to Metal-craft extending from earliest times up to the creations of living artist-craftsmen, and see if I cannot communicate to you an iota of its magic and charm.
OLD SECTION—CHAPTER ONE—GATES, GRILLES, SCREENS AND PANELS
(a) A World concerning the Technique of the Old-world Smith, as shown by his Grilles and Gates.
No lover of English ironwork should pursue his studies far without making friends with some Smith, and paying many a visit to his forge; since the methods of ironwork have changed amazingly little through the centuries.
I have remarked on the highly instructive days I spent in the hospitable forge of a well-known Smith still living and turning out memorable work in the direct tradition of his forefathers. The bellows would roar and the sparks leap at the stroke of the hammer—nothing essential was here that had not been present in the seventeenth century.
Early in his visits to the forge, the layman learns to appreciate the Smith’s three main modes of construction—welding, collaring, riveting.
In welding, the Smith—now, as in history—takes two pieces of iron, lays them in his fire, and, working at the bellows, heats them red-hot.
Now he brings them from the furnace, and slams each one vertically, endways, upon the anvil, in order to swell their soft ends, which gives him plenty of material to hammer on, so that the completed weld will not be thinner than the rest of the iron bar.
This (Figure 1) is a preliminary to all welding. Then comes the real welding process. Bringing again both pieces from the fire, he places them together, end-on, and hammers their glowing ends, at first lightly, then with increasing force, till both become one—and most astoundingly one. The cooling bar, to all appearances has been one solid piece since time began! Not the slightest trace of the weld, nor, any irregularity of line is perceptible. To the layman there is something miraculous in a simple weld by a master Smith.
Fig. 1
Some Smiths use sand or borax in the operation ; but this Smith used neither, and his weld was always faultless.
The collar, or moulded clip,
explains itself. A short, strap-like piece of iron, it is used undisguisedly to join two curves in some flowing design.
In riveting (a process of joining lower in the artistic scale than welding) the Smith bores his two pieces of metal, rivets or pins them, then burrs over the rivet to give it a round head, or to make it almost unnoticeable. Searching examination is needed in the photographs to detect the joins and the small heads of the rivets, which betray that this process, and not welding, has been used. Often, when applying flowing acanthus leaves to a curve of iron, the Smith will bend over the scarf
or thin joining end of the leaves in order to get a firm fixing ; this will be observed in the illustrations.
Welding is used for branching foliage in fine work ; the collar joins curves or geometrical figures, while rivets are employed in less noble work, to apply acanthus to a flowing design, and also as the centre of a metal rose or flower. Collared work is light and elastic, and can be put together more easily than riveted work, but the collar is quite visible and must become part of the design. Usually, it is moulded.
Fig. 2
The Smith’s tools have changed so little that a fifteenth-century Smith could stroll into a country forge of to-day and begin work without embarrassment; for here are anvil, hammer, pincers, and cold chisel—all the instruments with which he worked his metal while hot, in addition to those that, later, were brought by the Locksmith, who made possible the delicate work on cold metal, and used the saw, the drill, and the file. Although, indeed, the oxy-acetylene apparatus might puzzle that fifteenth-century Smith.
Yet though this apparatus may be seen in many a forge to-day, it is not popular among the best workers, and I hear that the old manner of welding, by the hand, is both swifter and neater. Oxy-acetylene,
I was told, "entails a lot of cleaning up on the job afterwards ; and even then, you can always tell. The hand weld is more satisfactory and artistic in every way."
Curious points would arise from my conversation with the Smith at those moments when he would relax to light his pipe with a bit of glowing metal—points of great interest to the student of wrought-iron. For example :
Here is a test, not only for the genuineness of a piece of ironwork, but also for whether it was used inside or outside a house !
A genuine piece,
I was assured, has an unmistakable odour when heated, if it comes from inside a house. A ‘housey,’ domestic sort of smell, hard to describe, but unmistakable.
One Smith demonstrated this for me by heating a