Sunday outing

First published in Column Eight on the 29^th June, 1994

On a Sunday bright and sunny after heavy rain, my wife and I visited the blacksmith in North Rd. Talk about atmosphere – this place has heaps.

The interior of the smithy’s shop remained dim until our eyes became used to the pale light. Gradually we saw that the sunlight was in fact streaming through windows at the back of the shop, though the smoke heaving up from the not-long-lit fire blocked it at first. After the sunlight took over, only a constant thin wave of smoke was visible, as though it was somehow trapped between two panes of glass.

Lava Lamp 

I stood like a child captivated by the patterns being formed.

Later in the day (on one of the rare, peaceful times when we’ve snuck out minus any of the children) we visited an antique shop in Waitati. Standing on a dresser was a Lava Lamp, in going order. This seventies-style lamp heats the wax inside and causes it to waft up and around in the liquid in increasingly complex and fascinating formations. The smithy’s shop smoke was equally fascinating.

Round the smith walls are examples of equipment used in the past, and other collected artifacts. On all sides wrought ironwork in the form of glass-topped tables, hall stands and utensil hangers crowds for your attention.

The forge burned bright with Strongman coal, hot enough to soften the iron within a couple of minutes. Every so often the blacksmith, Bill Green, would use the bellows (electrified – no 19^th century urchin in sight) and the flames would flare up in a roar.

Holding the red hot metal, he’d lay it on his anvil and strike it repeatedly, rhythmically, like a ringing song without words. The iron yielded under his hammer, changing rapidly to the shape he desired. At one point he’d lay the end over the edge and a sharp tap would convert the straight end into a neat bend.

His skill made it look so easy: I could see me trying, and finding the glowing end dropping off on the floor while the other scorched my hand.

The iron had next to be formed into a scroll and a special device was hooked into the anvil. Using this, he’d twist the iron until it conformed to the spiral shape he wanted. Once this was complete, he put the scrolled meal down on the floor where it almost inadvertently formed a large eye-delighting, wheel-shaped pattern with the other finished scrolls.

Meanwhile his wife, Thelma, answered any questions we had about what was being made (metal shelving for a bakery in Queenstown), or what other sort of work they did and how many people still work as blacksmiths – not many by the sound of things. Thelma is more than a question-answerer: she now does a good deal of the welding required on the job.

The common picture of the blacksmith is that of a muscular sweat-covered gent holding the hind leg of horse to see if the shoe he’s just made fits. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen much anymore, in spite of the number of horses that have to be shod in a country mad on horse racing and show jumping.

Most horses, I discovered, are cold-shod from factory-made shoes, which is a bit like buying your clothes off-the-peg. (I suppose, for the average horse these days, the expression, ‘If the shoe fits, wear it,’ is very apt.) Hot fitting is only done occasionally – it is a bit like humans going to a podiatrist for a special shoe.

Watching someone at work on a craft whose history is centuries old is mesmerising, as though you’re participating in a mysterious process. Victoria Sackville-West once wrote: ‘All craftsmen share a knowledge. They have held Reality down fluttering on a bench.’

 

 

 

I think this blacksmith’s shop is now gone from North Rd, though there is a forge located in the old Gas Works Museum in Braemar St, South Dunedin, where you can get lessons in blacksmith work.

 

 

 

 

I called the Lava Lamp an Astro Lamp in the original for some unknown reason.

Blacksmithing is more than ‘centuries’ old; it’s more like three and a half millennia.

The Sackville-West quote comes from her book, Summer.