Metal heads

In my twenties, I suffered a great deal from anxiety, caused I now realise by a sense of dislocation, a too-rapid and ill-grounded coming to terms with adulthood. That's long in the past now, but I remember my doctor back then saying, you know Mark if ever you get stressed, just go and polish your bikes.

At the time I lived in a small Northumberland village and everyone knew I cycled. His point was not that they needed cleaning - but rather, that when you're deeply upset, a physical and absorbing distraction is often the best and simplest medicine.  It's why I rock climbed so much, and why my bikes were always immaculate.

I was reminded of his advice this week when I travelled north, leaving my poor sick dog (whose accident had left me so distraught) to spend a day with Spike the Blacksmith. I've long loved the touch and form of metal objects; my house has Suffolk latches, handmade hooks for our coats, hearth irons on the fireplace...  There's a tangibility to them, and a mystery too, for I've often wondered how the curls and folds are beaten from the bars of iron.

Let's get you bashing, said Spike, twenty minutes after I arrived.

Her forge-cum-studio is in mid-wales, and I guess I expected more of a farrier feel than the gothic workshop that she'd shown me around.  I was treated first to her house of horrors Halloween room, complete with crawl through door, mock electric chair and a doll guillotine.  There was also a gallery, displaying metal and ceramic sculptures - a sort of mash-up of Damien Hurst, Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois.  They're a response to love, she said.  Not everyone would get it.

But I did and we talked throughout the day about the edge between cliche and crap, about gothic horror (her thing) and artistic Romanticism (mine), about learning and making and forging — indeed, lots on forging and the process of trial and error, call and response, theme and variation; just like painting or writing.  It's a matter of feel as much as formula.

And of hammering too.  

No smwddio! Spike would demand as I tried to shape my glowing bar with more of a nudge than a straight bash. It's the colloquial Welsh word for ironing, pronounced 'smooth-e-o'. It made me laugh and kept me on point to hit the bar straight and true over the anvil that rung out - yes, it really did - as if it enjoyed its fifty thousandth strike as much as all the ones before.

Which reminded me of Oscar, and the way that every ball I throw is just as exciting as the last...  I showed Spike a photo of his head staples; they could be gothic piercings we laughed, and got quickly back to bashing... and bending our way through the morning's session.

By midday, I'd made two coat hooks and some S-shaped hangers in anticipation of the main project that afternoon. I wanted to make a fire pit tripod, I said, suspecting it might be a bit ambitious on day one, but buoyed by Spike's confidence and 'have a go' attitude.  I'd made good progress, she said, as we worked out the design using chalk and string and few 'yep, that'll dos'.

One of the attractions of blacksmithing, Spike said, is that it works on the basis of 'about right' rather than 'perfectly precise'. She's bang on (no smwdddio) the money; there's an iterative, work-it-out-as-you-go feel to the process: cutting, sanding, heating bashing, heating, bashing, heating... repeat as necessary...  

Then once you've got your points in order, bending and twisting in the jigs. It's all very manual, down to earth and matter of fact — and yet it's guided by a knowledge that's forged from the thousands of repetitive hours that make up any mastery.

No smwddio, she berates me again.

I was pleased with the tripod I made. In six hours, I'd gone from complete newbie to, might we say, novitiate? Can that word apply to a horror goth's pupil?  It could to Spike I reckon. 'I'd like to live for six hundred years,' she said, 'to acquire all the skills I need.' Learning is an all-consuming passion she claimed. 'When I'm working on my sculptures, I forget about everything else —I've been here twenty years but it's nowhere near enough.'

We finished my lessons with a polish of the pieces; a process that's rather like framing a picture — the painter's prize, they used to say.  It brings everything into sharp relief, reminds you of the intricacy and yet simplicity of it all; of the effort you'd made, and the room to improve... next time...

Talking of which, it was getting dark outside; the day had passed so swiftly that I'd barely noticed. Putting my tripod in the car I could have sworn there were bats in the courtyard, but maybe that's my imagination —or Spike's. As I drove home, I thought of poor Oscar and the metal in his head, of the metaphorical equivalent in mine - and of the two bikes in my shed, that could do with a clean sometime soon.

-----------

Spike Blackhurst is an artist-teacher and blacksmith, based at Llanbrynmair in Mid Wales. I attended a one-to-one blacksmithing course which I paid for myself and frankly, it was fab - bonkers too, but definitely fab!  https://spiketheblacksmith.co.uk/

And he's getting better...