Artist Blacksmith Design: The Art Behind Blacksmithing and Metalwork by David Freedman

Author:David Freedman [Freedman, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-01T18:30:00+00:00

Photo: David Freedman

Back to Nature

The Ultimate Source of Inspiration

My rural workshop has always been surrounded by growth. Down in the fertile flood plains of Cheshire, everything grows in abundance. Nettles weave amongst the rust pile that props up every smithy wall. Tendrils of creepers and honeysuckle scramble to climb over the roof and in the last two years, a wayward hop has actually found its way in and enjoys the relative warmth and light afforded by a skylight. It’s impossible to ignore the connection between living forms and the shapes that emerge from the heating and hammering of metal bars. For as long as iron has been shaped in this way, people have reproduced the wiggles and branches and scrolls of the natural world.

Spirals were studied by mathematicians such as Leonardo Fibonacci, curious to note their recurrence in nature, from snail shells to weather systems and even galaxies. Euclid studied the golden ratio, a supposedly perfect measure of proportion often found in nature and pleasing to the eye; further evidence that we crave a certain visual order. Scrolls in blacksmithing are usually there as a decorative way to finish a bar in a design, or to fill space and it just so happens that in most cases they are logarithmic spirals that follow the golden ration. For each blow the blacksmith makes to the back of the scroll as it curls over the anvil, the bend becomes gentler, gradually opening out. The eye tells the blacksmith what proportion works best and it seems that usually this is the same as that which grows all around them.

By looking at growth forms, regular formulae appear, but also the irregularities. This is something I enjoy exploring in my work; how symmetry and pattern flow into randomness.

The branches of a tree will grow in a formulaic pattern, but the wind will distort this order.

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