Mythology 's smithy in the centre,
Níðuð's daughter
Böðvildr to the left, and Níðuð's dead sons hidden to the right of the smithy. Between the girl and the smithy, Wayland can be seen in an eagle fetch flying away. From the
Ardre image stone VIII on
Gotland In Hindu mythology,
Tvastar also known as Vishvakarma is the blacksmith of the
devas. The earliest references of
Tvastar can be found in the
Rigveda.
Hephaestus (Latin:
Vulcan) was the blacksmith of the
gods in
Greek and
Roman mythology. A supremely skilled artisan whose forge was a volcano, he constructed most of the weapons of the gods, as well as beautiful assistants for his smithy and a metal fishing-net of astonishing intricacy. He was the god of metalworking, fire, and craftsmen. In
Celtic mythology, the role of Smith is held by eponymous (their names do mean 'smith') characters :
Goibhniu (Irish myths of the
Tuatha Dé Danann cycle) or
Gofannon (Welsh myths/ the
Mabinogion).
Brigid or Brigit, an Irish
goddess, is sometimes described as the patroness of blacksmiths. In the
Nart mythology of the
Caucasus the hero known to the
Ossetians as
Kurdalægon and the
Circassians as
Tlepsh is a blacksmith and skilled craftsman whose exploits exhibit
shamanic features, sometimes bearing comparison to those of the Scandinavian deity
Odin. One of his greatest feats is acting as a type of male
midwife to the hero
Xamyc, who has been made the carrier of the embryo of his son
Batraz by his dying wife the water-sprite Lady Isp, who spits it between his shoulder blades, where it forms a womb-like cyst. Kurdalaegon prepares a type of tower or scaffold above a quenching bath for Xamyc, and, when the time is right,
lances the cyst to liberate the infant hero Batraz as a newborn babe of white-hot
steel, whom Kurdalægon then quenches like a newly forged sword. used the blacksmith as a motif in
his own extensive mythology. Here,
Los, a protagonist in several of Blake's poems, is tormented at his smithy by the figure
Spectre in an illustration Blake's poem
Jerusalem. This image comes from Copy E. of that work, printed in 1821 and in the collection of the
Yale Center for British Art The
Anglo-Saxon Wayland Smith, known in
Old Norse as
Völundr, is a heroic blacksmith in Germanic mythology. The
Poetic Edda states that he forged beautiful gold rings set with wonderful gems. He was captured by king
Níðuðr, who cruelly
hamstrung him and imprisoned him on an island. Völundr eventually had his revenge by killing Níðuðr's sons and fashioning
goblets from their skulls,
jewels from their eyes and a
brooch from their teeth. He then
raped the king's daughter, after drugging her with strong beer, and escaped, laughing, on wings of his own making, boasting that he had fathered a child upon her. Forges the
Sampo'',
Berndt Godenhjelm, 19th century Seppo
Ilmarinen, the Eternal Hammerer, blacksmith and inventor in the
Kalevala, is an archetypal artificer from
Finnish mythology.
Tubal-Cain is mentioned in the
book of Genesis of the
Torah as the original smith.
Ogun, the god of blacksmiths, warriors, hunters and others who work with iron is one of the pantheon of
Oriṣa traditionally worshipped by the
Yoruba people of West Africa.
Before the Iron Age Gold,
silver, and
copper all occur in nature in their
native states, as reasonably pure metals
humans probably worked these metals first. These metals are all quite
malleable, and humans' initial development of hammering techniques was undoubtedly applied to these metals. During the
Chalcolithic era and the
Bronze Age, humans in the Mideast learned how to
smelt,
melt,
cast,
rivet, and (to a limited extent)
forge copper and bronze. Bronze is an
alloy of copper and approximately 10% to 20%
Tin. Bronze is superior to just copper, by being harder, being more resistant to corrosion, and by having a lower melting point (thereby requiring less fuel to melt and cast). Much of the copper used by the Mediterranean World came from the island of
Cyprus. Most of the tin came from the
Cornwall region of the island of
Great Britain, transported by sea-borne
Phoenician and
Greek traders. Copper and bronze cannot be hardened by heat-treatment, they can only be hardened by
cold working. To accomplish this, a piece of bronze is lightly hammered for a long period of time. The localized stress-cycling causes
work hardening by changing the size and shape of the metal's
crystals. The hardened bronze can then be ground to sharpen it to make edged tools.
Clocksmiths as recently as the 19th century used
work hardening techniques to harden the teeth of
brass gears and
ratchets. Tapping on just the teeth produced harder teeth, with superior wear-resistance. By contrast, the rest of the gear was left in a softer and tougher state, more capable of resisting cracking. Bronze is sufficiently corrosion-resistant that
artifacts of bronze may last thousands of years relatively unscathed. Accordingly, museums frequently preserve more examples of Bronze Age metal-work than examples of artifacts from the much younger
Iron Age. Buried iron artifacts may completely
rust away in less than 100 years. Examples of ancient iron work still extant are very much the exception to the norm.
Iron Age Concurrent with the advent of alphabetic characters in the
Iron Age, humans became aware of the metal
iron. However, in earlier ages, iron's qualities, in contrast to those of bronze, were not generally understood. Iron
artifacts, composed of
meteoric iron, have the
chemical composition containing up to 40%
nickel. As this source of this iron is extremely rare and fortuitous, little development of smithing skills peculiar to iron can be assumed to have occurred. That we still possess any such artifacts of meteoric iron may be ascribed to the vagaries of climate, and the increased corrosion-resistance conferred on iron by the presence of nickel. During the (north) Polar Exploration of the early 20th century,
Inughuit, northern
Greenlandic Inuit, were found to be making iron knives from two particularly large nickel-iron meteors. One of these meteors was taken to
Washington, D.C., where it was remitted to the custody of the
Smithsonian Institution. The
Hittites of
Anatolia first discovered or developed the smelting of iron ores around 1500 BC. They seem to have maintained a near monopoly on the knowledge of iron production for several hundred years, but when their empire collapsed during the Eastern Mediterranean upheavals around 1200 BC, the knowledge seems to have escaped in all directions. In the
Iliad of
Homer (describing the
Trojan War and
Bronze Age Greek and Trojan warriors), most of the
armor and weapons (swords and spears) are stated to have been of bronze. Iron is not unknown, however, as
arrowheads are described as iron, and a "ball of iron" is listed as a prize awarded for winning a competition. The events described probably occurred around 1200 BC, but Homer is thought to have composed this epic poem around 700 BC; so exactitude must remain suspect. ,
Canada in the late 19th century The historical record during the
Late Bronze Age Collapse is very inconsistent. Very few iron artifacts remain from the early
Iron Age, due to loss from corrosion and re-use of iron as a valuable commodity. However, all of the basic operations of blacksmithing were in use by the time the Iron Age reached a particular locality. The scarcity of records and artifacts, and the rapidity of the transition from Bronze Age to Iron Age, is a reason to use evidence of bronze smithing to infer about the early development of blacksmithing. It is uncertain when Iron weapons replaced Bronze weapons because the earliest Iron swords did not significantly improve on the qualities of existing bronze artifacts. Unalloyed iron is soft, does not hold an edge as well as a properly constructed bronze blade and needs more maintenance. Iron ores are more widely available than the necessary materials to create bronze however, which made iron weapons more economical than comparable bronze weapons. Small amounts of steel are often formed during several of the earliest refining practices, and when the properties of this alloy were discovered and exploited, steel edged weapons greatly outclassed bronze. Iron is different from most other materials (including bronze), in that it does not immediately go from a solid to a liquid at its
melting point. H2O is a solid (ice) at −1 C (31 F), and a liquid (water) at +1 C (33 F). Iron, by contrast, is definitely a solid at , but over the next it becomes increasingly plastic and more "taffy-like" as its temperature increases. This extreme temperature range of variable solidity is the fundamental material property upon which blacksmithing practice depends. Another major difference between bronze and iron fabrication techniques is that bronze
can be melted. The melting point of iron is much higher than that of bronze. In the western (Europe & the Mideast) tradition, the technology to make fires hot enough to melt iron did not arise until the 16th century, when smelting operations grew large enough to require overly large bellows. These produced blast-furnace temperatures high enough to melt partially refined ores, resulting in
cast iron. Thus cast-iron frying pans and cookware did not become possible in Europe until 3000 years after the introduction of iron smelting. China, in a separate developmental tradition, was producing cast iron at least 1000 years before this. Although iron is quite abundant, good quality steel remained rare and expensive until the industrial developments of
Bessemer process et al. in the 1850s. Close examination of blacksmith-made antique tools clearly shows where small pieces of steel were forge-welded into iron to provide the hardened steel cutting edges of tools (notably in axes, adzes, chisels, etc.). The re-use of quality steel is another reason for the lack of artifacts. The
Romans (who ensured that their own weapons were made with good steel) noted (in the 4th century BC) that the
Celts of the Po River Valley had iron, but not good steel. The Romans record that during battle, their Celtic opponents could only swing their swords two or three times before having to step on their swords to straighten them. On the
Indian subcontinent,
Wootz steel was, and continues to be, produced in small quantities. In southern Asia and
western Africa, blacksmiths form endogenous
castes that sometimes speak distinct languages.
Medieval period , from a medieval
French manuscript smith and his forge in
Wallachia, by , 1860 In the medieval period, blacksmithing was considered part of the set of
seven mechanical arts. Prior to the
Industrial Revolution, a "village
smithy" was a staple of every town. Factories and mass-production reduced the demand for blacksmith-made tools and hardware. Blacksmiths typically worked in small shops, often in the center of a village or town. Their shops were typically equipped with a forge, an anvil, and a variety of other tools. The work of a medieval blacksmith was physically demanding and often dangerous. Blacksmiths had to be able to lift and move heavy pieces of metal, and they had to be careful not to burn themselves on the hot forge. Despite the challenges, blacksmithing was a respected trade in medieval society. Blacksmiths were considered to be skilled artisans, and their work was essential to the functioning of medieval society.
Women Whilst the majority of blacksmiths named in Britain in the medieval period were men, some women also worked as smiths. For example, in 1346
Katherine Le Fevre was appointed by Edward III to ‘keep up the king’s forge within the
Tower and carry on [its] work … receiving the wages pertaining to the office’. Another common technique was welding. Welding is the process of joining two pieces of metal together by heating them until they melt and then hammering them together. Blacksmiths also used a variety of other techniques, such as casting, cutting, and filing. The original fuel for forge fires was
charcoal.
Coal did not begin to replace charcoal until the forests of first Britain (during the AD 17th century), and then the eastern United States of America (during the 19th century) were largely depleted. Coal
can be an inferior fuel for blacksmithing, because much of the world's coal is contaminated with
sulfur. Sulfur contamination of iron and steel make them "red short", so that at red heat they become "crumbly" instead of "plastic". Coal sold and purchased for blacksmithing should be largely free of sulfur. European blacksmiths before and through the medieval era spent a great deal of time heating and hammering iron before forging it into finished articles. Although they were unaware of the chemical basis, they were aware that the quality of the iron was thus improved. From a scientific point of view, the reducing atmosphere of the forge was both removing
oxygen (rust), and soaking more
carbon into the iron, thereby developing increasingly higher grades of steel as the process was continued.
Industrial era During the eighteenth century, agents for the
Sheffield cutlery industry scoured the British country-side, offering new carriage springs for old. Springs must be made of hardened steel. At this time, the processes for making steel produced an extremely variable product—quality was not ensured at the initial point of sale. Springs that had survived cracking through hard use over the rough roads of the time, had proven to be of a better quality steel. Much of the fame of Sheffield cutlery (knives, shears, etc.) was due to the extreme lengths the companies took to ensure they used high-grade steel. shops in
Topeka,
Kansas, 1943 During the first half of the nineteenth century, the US government included in their
treaties with many
Native American tribes, that the US would employ blacksmiths and
strikers at
Army forts, with the expressed purpose of providing Native Americans with iron tools and repair services. During the early to mid-nineteenth century, both European armies as well as both the
U.S. Federal and
Confederate armies employed blacksmiths to shoe horses and repair equipment such as wagons, horse tack, and artillery equipment. These smiths primarily worked at a
traveling forge that when combined with a
limber, comprised wagons specifically designed and constructed as blacksmith shops on wheels to carry the essential equipment necessary for their work. , 1915
Lathes, patterned largely on their
woodturning counterparts, had been used by some blacksmiths since the middle-ages. During the 1790s
Henry Maudslay created the first
screw-cutting lathe, a watershed event that signaled the start of blacksmiths being replaced by
machinists in
factories for the hardware needs of the populace.
Samuel Colt neither invented nor perfected
interchangeable parts, but his insistence (and other industrialists at this time) that his
firearms be manufactured with this property, was another step towards the obsolescence of metal-working artisans and blacksmiths. (See also
Eli Whitney). As demand for their products declined, many more blacksmiths augmented their incomes by taking in work shoeing
horses. A shoer-of-horses was historically known as a
farrier in English. With the introduction of
automobiles, the number of blacksmiths continued to decrease, many former blacksmiths becoming the initial generation of automobile
Mechanics. The nadir of blacksmithing in the United States was reached during the 1960s, when most of the former blacksmiths had left the trade, and few if any new people were entering the trade. By this time, most of the working blacksmiths were those performing
farrier work, so the term
blacksmith was effectively co-opted by the farrier trade.
Neoclassicism era In the final part of the 18th century, forged ironwork continued to decline due to the aforementioned industrial revolution, shapes of the elements in the designs of window grilles and other decorative functional items continued to contradict natural forms, surfaces begin to be covered in paint, cast iron elements are incorporated into the forged designs. Main features of
Neoclassicism ironwork (also referred to as
Louis XVI style and
Empire style ironwork) include smooth straight bars, decorative geometric elements, double or oval volutes and the usage of elements from
Classical antiquity (
Meander (art), wreaths etc.). Typical for this kind of ironwork is that the ironwork is painted white with gold (gilded) elements. == 20th and 21st centuries ==