That the art and science of wrought ironwork migrated from the Middle East to Europe is well-documented. Less known has been the economic, social and cultural importance of iron in African societies. Carbon dating shows metallurgy there dating back 5000 years – well before its appearance in Europe – proof Africa didn’t learn ironmaking techniques from outside, as had long been maintained, but from within.
Ironworkers were an elite group in West and West Central Africa. In West Africa, the rise of the Edo, Fon, and a series of Yoruba kingdoms between 1400 and 1700 owed their political dominance to heavily equipped armies, using a highly developed iron technology. Blacksmiths are given central roles in the mythical origins of numerous West Central African and West African peoples.
Blacksmiths have traditionally occupied a unique and powerful position in African social organization since at least the 13th century founding of the Mali Empire. Politically and socially, Mande blacksmiths were extremely powerful, providing invaluable counsel to the village chief. While revered and honored, the spiritual and ritual knowledge and activities of blacksmiths were also greatly feared. They were believed to control the natural forces intrinsic to all objects, a force the Mande call nyama, which is understood to be both energy and the explanation for the organization of the Mande world.
Mingei International Museum exhibition: The Beauty of Use - 30th Year Anniversary Exhibition, 2007, Courtesy of the Mingei International Museum, Anthony Scoggins photogaph
African men with iron making skills were brought to the Chesapeake region of Maryland and Virginia to work as blacksmiths on plantations and in the developing iron industry of 18th century Colonial America. By 1775, the colonies were the world’s third largest producer of iron, a dominance built largely on slave labor.
Those in the Chesapeake were the most privileged of African and African American workers. The most skilled worked independently in positions of authority, even paid for work done on their own time.
Mingei International Museum exhibition: The Beauty of Use - 30th Year Anniversary Exhibition, 2007, Courtesy of the Mingei International Museum, Anthony Scoggins photogaph
There is evidence that suggests African ironworkers may have transferred old sacred beliefs associated with iron along with their technology. John Michael Vlach, director of The George Washington University’s Folklife Program, reports finding a small wrought-iron male figure under the dirt floor of a blacksmith’s shop near slave quarters in Alexandria, Virginia.
It resembles, says the anthropologist Patrick McNaughton, the kind blacksmiths made and buried under their forges to protect them while engaging in their “dangerous transformative craft that radically changed the order of materials – as dirt (ore) becomes metal.” It was believed the forces of nature were not pleased at this usurpation of their power and so the blacksmiths protected themselves by making a little watchman.
John Paul Huguley, Founder of the American College of the Building Arts, talks about the building arts.
John Paul Huguley talks about the tradition of blacksmithing and the blacksmithing program at the American College of the Building Arts.
