Last weekend some of the Ironart crew: Andy, Olly, Matty, Jake and James headed off to the Centre for Rural Crafts at Holme Lacy, home to the National School of Blacksmithing to attend the British Artist Blacksmith Association Conference and AGM 2024 – this year entitled ‘Expressive Metals’
This annual event is really well organised and a fantastic opportunity to chew the cud with old friends and contemporaries in the blacksmithing world from all over the UK, but also to meet and make new connections with a fascinating group of like-minded people. This year was no exception, we enjoyed a demo and talk from Internationally renowned Canadian master goldsmith Charles Lewton-Brain. Charles is an artist and jeweller and a pioneer of a shaping method known as ‘fold forming’. Charles demonstrated fold forming using copper sheet, using the material’s flexibility to create complex organic shapes.
We also met an inspiring Australian smith Will Maguire. Will travelled and studied as a journeyman blacksmith working and learning skills from other renowned master blacksmiths all over the world. Will’s early career was spent working with iron on an industrial scale and he demonstrated to everyone, using a power hammer and working with a simple section of 50mm square bar – with the lightest touch of detail – how he could perfectly capture and evoke different human emotions in small figurative forms.
We enjoyed an inspiring talk by Cara Wassenberg, a multi-medium sculptor working predominantly with non-ferrous materials but also iron with glass. Cara combines multiple craft processes such as casting, forging, welding and polishing in different ways, her creative ideas come from nature: land and waterscapes and organic forms. James was also particularly taken with the demonstration by artist blacksmith Pete Crownshaw – showing amazing quality of finish working with stainless steel.
We had the opportunity to flex our own skills on the forges at the college, following the brief to make pieces of ‘wearable iron’ with some great interpretations to share – see pic of the fantastic metal baseball cap and sunglasses!
This year the National Heritage Ironwork Group hosted an exhibition at the AGM. If you aren’t already engaged with the NHIG and the great work that they do promoting appropriate treatment and repairs to historic ironwork, please do check them out. They regularly offer educational CPD courses for practising blacksmiths and custodians of historic ironwork.
We all came away feeling thoroughly inspired by our chosen craft, the imagination and creativity of blacksmiths and artists working with metal as a medium and the scope of what is possible beyond the varied projects that we carry out here at Ironart in Bath. With huge thanks to the team who are behind the BABA AGM – we loved it and we are already looking forward to next year.
