Matt Haugh, Master Smith: A Blacksmither’s Journey
Ash Stolley | November 15, 2023
Stepping through the threshold to the Warren Wilson College (WWC) blacksmith shop a sea of fire and metal was raging. Through the storm of hammers, Matt Haugh, a WWC student, stands relaxed, chatting about one project or another. One of the many soot-smeared faces on the Blacksmith Crew mentioned that they were busy preparing for parent’s weekend. It was not too long before the master smith emerged from the smoke and greeted me.
Haugh does not look like the caricatures of blacksmiths in the media. He does not have that dwarvish posture popularized by Tolkien. But take a closer look, and the eyes of an artist and the spirit of someone who understands iron and steel on a fundamental level become apparent.
Haugh was not always a metal worker, though they do admit there may have been some early indications of this interest with his teenage love of heavy metal music, and his lifelong love of the Pittsburgh Steelers, but they have always been an artist. Haugh studied film as an undergrad, but upon graduation, he spent the next seven years pursuing music.
During that time, his group recorded three records and did about 400 live performances. Music though, was not in the cards. Through those seven years, Haugh was never able to rely on music as a source of income and had to work other jobs as well.
Around 30 years old, Haugh decided it was time to start looking into trade jobs. They wanted to find a trade with a stable income stream that still allowed him an avenue for artistic expression. That is when he found welding, and from there his fascination with metalworking skyrocketed.
For him, welding was a practical skill, but he saw promise in it as a form of art. Quickly thereafter, he encountered blacksmithing and something clicked in him.
It was an immediate love for the processes and world of blacksmithing. They knew that it was a craft that they could (and would have to if they chose to pursue it) keep learning for the rest of their life.
“From then on it has been metal all the way,” Haugh said.
Haugh went back to school doing a three-year graduate program in metal smithing while at the same time doing an apprenticeship with a blacksmith and sculptor in Illinois.
After graduation, they went straight to teaching. Starting first at a high school in Montana teaching pottery, Haugh was not afraid to add metal working into these high school art programs. But he did not have a dedicated forage in Montana, and when a teaching spot opened up at the only high school in the country with a dedicated educational forge, Haugh was quick in applying. Even though the role was that of a ceramics teacher as well, one look at his resume told the school that they were also a highly qualified blacksmith.
Haugh worked at that school which is called Colorado Rocky Mountain School (CRMS) in Colorado. He smithed and taught smithing, and even had some work published during that time. Eventually, it was time for him to move on and he found his way here, to a tiny college hidden away in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Haugh has now been teaching here at WWC for seven years, but unlike his last two seven-year stints, it does not look like they are going anywhere any time soon. There are not many colleges in the country with a dedicated multistation forage like WWC. While not as rare as one at a high school, Haugh feels incredibly lucky to have landed here.
He has worked hard at expanding the number of four credit class options available to students interested in various types of metalworking. These classes include the new Ferrus Jewelry class and the Sculptural Wrought Iron class, but his intro course called Hammer and Anvil, was expanded to four credits last semester.
Despite all of his recent hard work, Haugh sees the future as unclear. They acknowledge that the college is in the middle of some huge changes, and with these changes come instability and uncertainty. Through it all, Haugh maintains that his goal is to give students the opportunity and option to explore metalworking to as great or little a degree as desired. To accommodate that, he hopes to continue expanding the classes the forage offers long into the future.
Haugh is many things: a master of his craft, a teacher, a musician, a potter. But at the beginning of my interview with Haugh, I asked them what they see themself as. Their answer was not one I expected.
“I am multiple,” Haugh said.