Forging On: The History of Blacksmithing at WWC
Jasper Everingham | December 1, 2022
The blacksmith studio at Warren Wilson College (WWC) has been in operation for over two decades, hammering out goods for craft markets and commission, though its story is seldom told. According to an article published by John Bowers in the Owl and Spade Magazine in 2002, the origins of the blacksmithing program at WWC trace back to 1997.
What began as a makeshift blacksmithing forge for fun, the idea slowly attracted more and more student interest until then-student Karen Rudy paired up with alum Justin LaMountain convinced the college administration to approve designs for a blacksmith’s shop on campus. The original shop was constructed in 2002; the Blacksmith Crew became an official work crew the same year. It has been in operation since, living down by the farm, pausing only for a renovation project in 2016 that put the shop temporarily out of commission.
Blacksmith Instructor Matt Haugh said that when he came to WWC in the summer of 2017, his role was largely spent getting the blacksmith program back on its feet after its renovation hiatus.
“The program right prior to my arrival was undergoing expansion,” Haugh said. “At that time, they began this addition to the original space that was built in 2002. And so when I arrived, the shop was completely dismantled — in fact, it had been temporarily relocated.”
Haugh said that he took his blacksmithing expertise from years of teaching before coming to WWC and applied it to make as good of a forge space as he could. Starting from a gutted shop with a dirt floor, he oversaw the raising and expansion of the shop that currently exists today.
“In part I think I was brought in to help get the program reinstalled down here and help in any way I [could] the completion of the renovation or addition,” Haugh said. “My first semester as supervisor was largely working on basically reinstalling all the equipment down here, building the equipment [and] the infrastructure.”
Haugh had also planned to create blacksmithing classes and expand the forge beyond the work program.
He acknowledged that he had never met Rudy, but said he believes that expanding blacksmithing into four credit classes was always her end goal, even as she was first getting the program off the ground in 2002.
“There's a class that I developed called Hammer and Anvil, Flame and Matter that will be a four credit class in the spring,” Haugh said. “Wood and fibers are also doing similar semester-long classes, so in the spring of 2023, they'll be the first [craft] courses that are semester-long that the college I think has ever done — at least where those courses become a part of the course catalog. That's a new and exciting direction for craft at Wilson.”
Haugh added that he was developing plans for a major as well, which he said would be a “significant development” for blacksmithing and craft at WWC. He remained adamant that blacksmithing was still of deep importance, even in a world that has long since adopted automated production over the forge.
Although blacksmithing has diminished societal significance in the modern world than four hundred years ago — when Haugh said it was at its apex — he said he doesn’t particularly mind. He said he believes blacksmithing still holds value, even for someone who isn’t committed to it as a field or profession.
“I don't assume that teaching the next generation of blacksmiths, because I get a lot of learners who are just interested,” Haugh said. “They want to try it, but they have no intention of becoming blacksmiths. [But] there's value in terms of the making. Beyond any object, beyond any thing, it can provide both practical and conceptual tools.”
Haugh expressed why he believes attention to blacksmithing is important.
“Why is it that we're still doing this in 2022? What does it offer?” Haugh asked. “It comes back to something that is related to discourses that are common to art and craft, and that is that there's a de-emphasis on the object and an emphasis on the process. The idea that there's value to the making, so the value of the product is subordinate to the value intrinsic in the making.”