February 26, 2004

Blacksmiths forge new ideas

Folly at the Forge pits muscle and mind against iron and steel

By Carol South
Herald contributing writer

       Blacksmiths pit muscle and heat against iron and steel.
      For those gathered at the Tenth Annual Folly at the Forge this weekend, it was once again an intense battle merging both wits and force as they crafted everything from art objects to practical tools.
      Hosted by Dan Nickels, owner of Black Rock Forge in East Bay Township, the event was part party and part classroom. Nickels, a generous and creative host every year, welcomed approximately 100 blacksmiths and artists from around the state and region. Once again, he threw open his shop and gave everyone access to his myriad forges, tools and ideas.
      Saturday afternoon, his main workshop was hazy with smoke. The air was overheated by flames from the roaring forges as the ring of hammers reverberated through the room.
      A main attraction of the afternoon was the effort by Ashen Carey of Ann Arbor to forge a large iron dragon's head. Carey heated the large iron block time after time, in between heating vigorously hammering the stubborn metal into a piece of art. Carey planned to donate the item to the Folly at the Forge's annual auction, the main fund-raiser for the following year's event.
      Throughout the weekend, blacksmiths talked shop and swapped ideas between their own hammering or watching others work.
      "I come here and find myself either teaching or wandering around getting ideas from others," said Ken Chambers of Freeland, a blacksmith since 1995.
      Chambers is a retired machinist who has worked summers as a blacksmith at Mackinac Island for seven years. He said the interest in this ancient craft has been on the rise for 30 years.
      "People realize that if we don't teach the craft and pass it along, it's going to die out," he said. "We teach a basic course on blacksmithing at the Midland Historical Society and more people are attending every time."
      But all was not iron and hammers as Nickels and co-host Susan Noakes had areas set up for enamel jewelry and glass bead making. This aspect of their annual gathering has been growing every year and they make sure each workshop attendee can make and take something with them.
      "I usually pull in some non-ferrous expert to give a seminar every year," Nickels noted.
      This year, the Folly at the Forge featured an intensive workshop by Barbara Parrow of Houghton Lake who guided students through the steps to make a Hurricane Lantern from the 1700s. Parrow, an expert tinsmith who has worked at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, noted that these lanterns take after their names, literally.
      "They were designed to stay lit even in a hurricane, the way the tin is punched it lets the light out and keeps the wind from getting in," she said.
      Jim Rantala, an Elmwood Township resident, is already a renowned Windsor furniture maker. He attended the tinsmith workshop to learn a craft that has intrigued him for years, winding up with an eight-piece finished lantern adorned with a complex punched pattern.
      "I was wanting to get a little bit of instruction and now I'm hooked and off I go," said Rantala, wryly acknowledging his tendency to throw himself completely into new artistic directions. "I knew I was going to do tin someday, I've been saving the tools for years."
      Donna and Jim Carmean of Grayling have attended the Folly at the Forge for the past four years. Jim is the blacksmith and Donna works with jewelry and this year made a tin lantern. She appreciated the step-by-step process laid out by Parrow.
      "This is easy, just time consuming," she said as she fashioned the cone-shaped lid for her lantern.
      Donna Carmean finds a wealth of ideas, inspiration and training every year at the event.
      "It is just three solid days of art, art, art," she noted. "You don't want it to end except you're exhausted and so dirty you just have to go home."