It has been 178 years since Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lionized “The Village Blacksmith,” comparing him to “a sexton ringing a village bell when the evening sun is low.”
“The Longfellow poem, although charming, is behind the times,” declares Rhoda Weber Mack from the refurbished ice house in Florida, Orange County, which she and her late husband, Ed Mack, established to keep the blacksmith craft alive. “The blacksmith trade is no longer limited to hammer and anvil, and women have joined men in pursuing this craft,” Mack notes.
In l981, the Macks founded the Fine Architectural Metalsmiths, bringing together artisans to handcraft custom architectural and ornamental work on a commission basis. The year 2003 saw establishment of the Center for Metal Arts, offering two tracks of study ”“ blacksmithing and fine metalsmithing.
This August, Mack will again welcome for an annual conference the celebrated Charles Lewton-Brain, the goldsmith who invented the art of fold forming, a technique by which metal is folded, repeatedly forged and annealed and unfolded, providing a three-dimensional form. Free folding is hailed as the first major innovation in sheet-work forming in thousands of years. The end product is intricate jewelry.
“Three years ago I launched the first annual Lewton-Brain Foldforming competition to coincide with our August conference,” Mack reports.” I was curious about where fold forming had gone in 30 years. I received hundreds of entries from four continents, including some truly remarkable work in silver from Wales.
“We will hold our Foldforming Awards Dinner with Charles Lewton-Brain August 1 at the Seligmann Center for the Arts in Sugar Loaf,” Mack says. “After a preview of entries, he will announce this year”™s winners.”
Throughout the year the metalsmiths fulfill contracts for such items as fences and railings, many with intricate designs of leaves and rosettes. The Florida-based artisans faced a particular challenge with design of a gateway to an interior courtyard at the Dakota apartments on 72nd Street in Manhattan. The apartments have housed celebrities, including John Lennon, who was shot at that location.
“The design involved very old rosettes, unusual scroll panels and Renaissance sheet work,” Mack reports. “We had to conceal electronic equipment and be certain that when the many design elements of the gate were assembled, the electronic contact points were exactly 1/32nd of an inch apart.
“Then there was the challenge in the Hamptons,” Mack recalls, “where a client faced with a need to protect metal from salt air could not afford the bronze he craved and needed to stay within the budget for stainless steel. We were able to satisfy his budget and color it to look like aged bronze.”
The show room and gift shop housed on the second floor of the former ice house boasts intricate designs, including a sharp shinned hawk of bronze with a penetrating gaze and slightly lifted wing.
Mack was raised on a Mennonite farm in southeastern Pennsylvania. She attended Eastern Mennonite University. Her future husband was an anthropology major at Frankliin and Marshall College. The couple wound up in Africa working in animal care at the Nairobe Game Park for six months.
“Back in the United States we explored options,” Mack recounts. “Ed chose to learn welding. Work with metal is a window onto a whole world ”“ art history, architecture, design, material sciences. We collected an entire library of art books.”
Mack”™s husband, who died last summer, in 2012 received the prestigious Julius Blum Award. The award is not given annually but reserved for an individual or organization making an outstanding contribution to the metal arts industry.
There are two Mack married daughters, Ariel and Ryanne, and four grandchildren.
Challenging Careers focuses on the exciting and unusual business lives of Hudson Valley residents. Comments or suggestions may be emailed to Catherine Portman-Laux at cplaux@optonline.net.
