Blacksmiths Meet at Floyd Center for the Arts
-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on March 18, 2021.
The Old Dominion Blacksmithing Association had its first club meeting of 2021 at the Floyd Center for the Arts’ blacksmithing forge on Saturday. Teacher and club president Jay Hatfield (pictured in red) said the club had one recent zoom meeting and had to cancel January’s meeting due to the ice storm.
With an educational goal of sharing knowledge of the historic craft, the club meets on the second Saturday of every month. Meetings take place all over the region and in Floyd a couple times a year. Club members also visit master blacksmiths for demonstrations and teaching.
It was a daylong workshop and about 12 club members attended. “This morning we worked on handle embellishment,” said Hatfield. As members stirred forging fires and hammered hot pieces at anvils, he explained that they were working on four projects that day.
“These are all pieces you put on the end of a bar to make it decorative and functional. You can hold this as a handle and have tool at the other end, and it hangs up,” he said while showing a leaf and tendril with an eye handle that came straight out of the fire.
It was 13-year old Matthew Hall’s second club workshop. His mother, who drove him from Madison Heights, near Lynchburg, said at his first forging workshop he made sleigh bells that she later hung on their Christmas tree.
She didn’t mind the three-hour drive to Floyd because her son enjoys the unique craft and the club is “such a community,” she said. Hall was working with blacksmithing teacher/mentor Ken Pritchett, while father and son team from from Franklin County, Gavin and Andy Pulley, worked together.
Hatfield, who hails from Chatham, took up blacksmithing when he was a kid in the Boy Scouts. “When I got out of the service, I got back into it. It’s been growing over the past 10 years since I started again,” he said.
He reported that the club will be back in Floyd next month, April 10. On March 20-21, the FCA will host an Intro to Blacksmithing called “White the Iron’s Hot,” which will be taught by Harley Akers, who was first introduced to blacksmithing at the Center.
On April 17-18- the Art Center’s long time blacksmithing teacher Bryan Fritts will be presenting a “Repurposed with a Purpose: Blacksmithing with Found Objects” workshop as part of the Center’s blacksmithing class series. For more information about upcoming classes, check out Center’s webpage at floydartcenter.org. ________________Colleen Redman
