Opening Day of Andiron Season

After 20 years of blacksmithing, it was time to change the business model with a new website. We've developed the first production designs, built prototypes, rebuilt them, weighed them, packaged them and delved into a national advertising campaign, Whew! We are in the retail world now and have a new respect for everyone who has set up a retail business from the ground up; a very different animal than commissioned works.

While creating "one of a kind" commissioned metalwork is very rewarding, it can also be at once exciting and frustrating and tends to be a challenging business model! I am sure that is why someone created the process of casting iron and bronze. But of course, we're a blacksmith shop not a foundry, so we won't be casting anything around here.

In commissioned work, our pieces would often involve new and untried processes and design details. By the time I had finished, I had the techniques pretty well figured out, but then I might not use them again for years! I always thought that my work could benefit from spending more time honing and studying a metalwork design until I knew it inside out.

Our challenge was to find our way to efficiency while not compromising the authenticity of the metalwork. So here we are, designing original pieces that will be produced in signed, limited-editions of 200. It's exciting to develop our designs and continue to work that same design until I really know it, like an old friend. And I mean, I really know these pieces; I don't think I have ever weighed a pair of my andirons before and I have certainly never crafted the same design twice.

Our new business model transformed our approach from a fire drill of deadlines for the one-off commissions into a thoughtful, design driven process offering efficiencies to both artist and client. At our place, artfulness is not forsaken by production!