Factories came into existence simultaneously with the rapid
development of America’s becoming populous and new substantial pieces of
land made accessible for occupations or for sale. The resources of the
neighborhood smiths were exhausted and strained, in addition to supplying all
aspects of ironwork for transportation, repairing, or replacement of new
machines, tools, and equipment. Future tasks yet unknown or discovered and
possibly of great necessity had to be constantly considered.
Sam Guarino Blacksmith Shop
Museum
During this era, blacksmiths had to think more in commercial terms as
time became more of a profit factor. They realized that buying hammers and
tongs from factories would be cheaper than making them, but they had to
reserve time for profitable work.
To some extent people expected to witness the disappearance of
blacksmiths at the end of the twentieth century. They were such a part of daily
life but were always taken for granted. Although very intelligent, they were
underprivileged, impoverished, poorly educated, and too modest to announce
their importance in their communities.
The enthusiasm of blacksmiths, however, has been transformed to the
skilled hands of the imaginative and creative artists who will preserve the
sounds, smells, and visual results of the blacksmith as a legacy for future
generations.
Blacksmithing as an art is enjoying a gradual rebirth with great
retribution. It is returning to its former position and normal state, probably
because it was abandoned in the dark days of the later nineteenth century.
The position of blacksmithing in modern life is inevitable, while
leaving adequate opportunity for young adults to apply themselves to the work
and critical design criterion required by the blacksmith. This creative work will
progress in its contribution to the quality of modern life. It IS growing. Its
power to attract is as enduring as the race of man. It will remain alive!
This circa 1913 blacksmith shop was originally located at
210 S. Jefferson Street in downtown Abbeville and was one
of the few blacksmith shops in operation in a downtown area
until it closed its doors in December 2004.
The blacksmith shop and all of its contents were graciously
donated by the Sam Guarino family to the City of Abbeville.
The Sam Guarino Blacksmith Shop now serves the community
with a historically accurate exhibit of early life in Abbeville
through the preservation of the blacksmith shop.
Sam Guarino Blacksmith Shop Museum
304 South State Street
Abbeville, LA 70510
Open by appointment only, please call 337-893-8550 or 337-898-4110
to schedule a group, student or individual tour
THE HISTORY OF THE BLACKSMITH
by Mary Ann Guarino
Blacksmithing as a craft had an accelerated disappearance or failing
when industry, mass production, and modern technology overwhelmed the
agricultural era and nearly caused its demise. As surprised as everyone was, it
actually survived. The charred coals had been gently fanned into flames by
people who, for various reasons, had decided to reinstate blacksmithing as a
hobby, a creative endeavor, or probably today as a necessity.
As extraordinary as it may seem at the beginning of the twenty-first
century, numerous people have constructed forges of their own and are earning
their livelihood by using iron, forges, anvils, hammers, and tongs. They have
proven that blacksmithing is well and flourishing once again, far from being
extinct, and these practitioners are learning more about the history and techniques
of this trade.
Some people imagine blacksmiths as men with brute strength, but this is
definitely a misrepresentation. Blacksmiths are extremely intelligent and
creative, and they apply their vision, strength, and imagination to their work. The
lack of uniform quality in iron and steel requires unusual personal attention from
the smith as well as a knowledge of improvisation and the use of only necessities
to complete his work.
Blacksmiths worked with a material very different from wood, bone,
horns, stone, and copper before the prehistoric discovery of iron. They also
learned to make the intense heat needed for the procedure to work the material
into useful and most required articles. They assembled tools to bend this material
in any way required.
Fire, air, earth, and water were once considered the four basic substances
of our world. The ancient blacksmith was privileged to work with all four. The
forge held the fire and the billows controlled the air needed. Iron and black metal
were part of the earth, and water was used to cool the hot iron and give firmness
to the red hot steel.
The exact times or places that anyone learned to make and shape iron or
steel as desired is unknown. Iron and steel were as essential to the advancement
of man in ancient times as they are today in the space age, and of spreading the
art of forging from all over the civilized world into the still primitive societies of
Africa, Arabia, and Europe.
Often working with iron is referred to as a trade rather than an art. It
really is both. Articles of iron, hammers, axes, plane bits, adzes, an ox-like
tool for dressing wood, knives, sickles, scythes, and augue bits were used for
boring holes in wood, files, chisels, carving tools, spears, swords, arrowheads,
and all other necessities of the differing farmers and craftsmen found in a
community. All craftsmen were basically dependent on the smith’s skill and
availability.
Blacksmiths were extremely important to transportation. Welding
and fitting wagon wheels, hub rings, shoeing horses and oxen, and making
and fitting all metal components of wagons, carriages, and sleighs of a horsedriven period were absolutely essential.
Iron hardware was made according to traditional design or to the
customer’s ability to know and appreciate truly beautiful and appropriate
workmanship. Hinges, large or small, decorative or plain, were made to
order. Door latches, window fasteners, scrapers, etc. were required for
modest homes and buildings. Secure wrought-iron gates and fences, spikes
for the top of brick walls were obtained from the blacksmith.
Although iron has always been one of the most abundant natural
elements of nature, its availability and usage were slow to emerge, since the
early iron workers could not comprehend the urgency required to reduce the
carbon content of the iron by remelting for a second time and that hammering
the ingots (bars or metals) would expel the carbon and other impurities to
produce the malleable iron known today. Malleable iron can be hammered,
pounded, or pressed into various shapes without breaking. The result was that
early iron was similar to cast iron and had a very brittle nature.
The origins of wrought iron as a material and of the blacksmith as
people of respect in the early days, established the blacksmiths and their art
with special powers to tame and control the hardest and most useful metal
then known. This is an impression that endures in some part to the present
day.
Another factor helping the blacksmith maintain high standards of
quality in his work is because he is not wholly dependent on brawn or
strength. As time passed the blacksmith living in a community smaller than a
town with his tradition of fine workmanship could hardly hope to compete in
production and price with the factory where one man could finish fifty
hammers or axes in a day instead of the maximum two or three possible for a
smith working at his forge.
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