Blacksmiths back in fashion

Press, 11 October 1986, Page 19

Blacksmiths back in fashion

By

Noel Gregg, who was an executive member of the New Zealand Craft Council for three years, knows from his own experience that some architects are beginning to employ craftsmen here. He recently completed 20 decorative iron veranda post tops in art nouveau style for a central city development in Nelson, commissioned from him by the innovative Wellington architect, lan Athfield. His approach is to choose the craftsman and then let him or her create the design. Now Noel Gregg has started work on big wrought-iron gates for another famous architect, Sir Miles Warren. They will adorn the entrance to’ the architect’s estate at Governor’s Bay, which already has several smaller Gregg gates in the garden.

Noel Gregg, New Zealand’s only “artist blacksmith,” has been to the United States and seen the future for New Zealand craftsmen. He found that American architects are once again employing artists and craftsmen to embellish their buildings; he is convinced that New Zealand architects will eventually follow suit. Collaboration between artists, architects, and designers was the theme of a conference of artist blacksmiths that he attended with 700 other blacksmiths at the University of Arizona, in Flagstaff.

“A new generation of architects and designers is bringing ornamentation back to the ‘leading edge’ of progressive architectural design,” he says. “Handforged decorative metalwork has been dormant for over 40 years. Throughout the Victorian and art deco eras, architecture was embellished and reembellished until ornamentation became meaningless and unde-

sirable. ‘Less is more’ became the guideline for the modern movement, but today, architectural ornamentation is being seen again in contemporary design.”

Success of these efforts is proportional to the understanding that artist and architect have of each other’s approach to the use of metal. In Noel Gregg’s opinion, metal gives form and presence to architecture. “The new style of building is going to lend itself to more craft,” he says. “Our main cities are saturated with office buildings, and architects have got to do something to attract people into them. Aesthetic values are going to determine where you can go.

“That’s what’s happening in the United States. They’ve got such things as the working spaces and lighting worked out. Now they’re concentrating on art work. Good craftsmen there have now got more work than they know what to do with.”

GARRY ARTHUR

In Arizona, he was able to compare notes with the leading American artist blacksmith, Albert Payley. The two smiths work in similar styles, their designs arising from concepts of growth. Albert Payley is renowned for his gates, and he is now working on a $6 million wrought-iron gate for New York’s Central Park.

Noel Gregg is sure that New Zealand’s contemporary craftsmen are producing work the equal of anything he saw in Europe or the United States. “And the New Zealand public is more aware than any buying public elsewhere. "You can go into any home in New Zealand and find some New Zealand craft. You don’t find that in Europe or the United States.” People there are more

inclined to buy reproductions of familiar pieces by established artists.

He found the North American Artist Blacksmiths Association very active in promoting the craft, and in encouraging promising smiths. They brought to the conference a very poor family from Mexico who were expert workers in copper, forging vessels using hand-pumped bellows, and their own smithing techniques. In Mexico, they were earning about $l2 a day, but after demonstrating their work at the artist blacksmiths’ conference, their work began selling at top prices through Macys of New York and Harrods of London.

His trip, for which he had a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grant, also took him to Austria to work with one of the world’s greatest blacksmiths, Walfrid Rubber. Artist blacksmiths elsewhere in the world have moved through art nouveau and art deco styles

to post-modern designs, but in Austria they are still producing work in the baroque style. Noel Gregg says this is so painstakingly slow to make that the craftsmen cannot hope to be paid adequately for the time they spend on it.

Old blacksmithing businesses that . had made agricultural equipment for generations were collapsing everywhere in Austria. An exception was’ an old. waterpowered forge that had ah order for one million scythes for an Arab country.

"They’re forged under a water-powered hammer that moves so fast you can’t see it,” he says. “They have a hundred of these hammers in a line, and the smiths sit there feeding the iron through to forge the blades.” The scythes are needed in the Arab world because of the high value placed on every scarce blade of grass as fodder for animals.