Today’s blacksmith combines art with function on a truly grand scale, conscious of community. Recycling iron fragments as a generational continuum – incorporating physical parts of the past into the present, with the promise of extending into the future – is at the heart of Tom Joyce’s installations. This idea of iron as DNA is not new. Farmers over the years melted down or re-used fragments of tools when making new ones.

Albert Paley, Drawing of Portal Gates for St. Louis Zoo, Courtesy of Paley Studios Ltd., Bruce Miller photograph

Albert Paley, Portal Gates for St. Louis Zoo, Courtesy of Paley Studios Ltd., Bruce Miller photograph

The modern blacksmith also is a pioneer in CAD – Computer Aided Design. Albert Paley has experimented with laser cutting of Cor-Ten steel, allowing him to create exotic installations, such as Animals Always at the St. Louis Zoo. This grand portal menagerie weighs 100 tons, extends over 130’ and towers 36’ high. Paley also uses lasers to cut substantially smaller pieces for the home.

Objects like candlesticks, flatware, serving pieces – all have been part of the silversmith’s repertoire since colonial days. Paul Revere crafted hundreds of objects for the home and the individual. His iconic Sons of Liberty Bowl was raised from a single sheet of silver – hammered, shaped, smoother into a design so perfectly fluid and visually pleasing, it appears that it was poured into a mold.

Many metalsmiths since have been giants in design and imagination, with boundless creativity, whose names are often forgotten.

Left: Merry Renk, James Love Peacock, Wedding Crown, 1981, Courtesy Mieko Hogan, Doug Hill photograph
Right: Eliel Saarinen, Tea Urn and Tray, c. 1934, Courtesy of Cranbrook Museum of Art, R.H. Hensleigh photograph

Too often, they have been women: Janet Payne Bowles, who designed and executed silver and gold serving pieces in the Arts and Crafts style for the personal use of the financier, J.P. Morgan; Margaret DePatta, whose concept of “optifacets”, executed with the lapidary Francis Sperisen, provided stones in jewelry new depth and vibrancy; and Margaret Craver, who not only created striking pieces, but also was instrumental in advancing the teaching of silversmithing. Not just a modernist, Craver also rediscovered a technique called “en resille” – enameling with a metal backing on glass – devising her own tools as she went along. Practiced in France for only a decade in the 19th century, only about 15 examples existed in the west.

Metalwork also has a rich heritage in many religious communities. Anonymous Hispanic artists combined their religious and spiritual traditions with etching and stamping skills to create objects of tin or silver, possessing a raw beauty and power. Ceremonial Judaica has also been represented by artists who have take pieces that, in the European tradition had been represented in heavy, jewel-encrusted style, and have given them a minimalist styling that, by eliminating the extraneous, cut to the essence of belief and faith. Mezzuzahs, Torah shields, kiddush cups, and more, by artists such as Fred Fenster, Robert Ebendorf, and Allan Adler, continue this rich tradition.

As noted, metal is ubiquitous, and some craft artists have applied their skills in more than one way. Harry Bertoia began with modernist tea services and other home goods – then extended his reach to chairs, most notably the lotus shaped “Diamond” chair, a fluid, sculptural form made from a lattice of welded steel. Strong as any solid wood chair, it is so delicate, it seems as if, in Bertoia’s own words, "Space passes right through it."


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