We don’t shoe horses!

I’ve heard the question posed “Why are cobblers, who shoe humans, comical figures in history while blacksmiths, who shoe horses, are heroic figures?” There’s a very simple answer to that.

Blacksmiths. Don’t. Shoe. Horses!

There, I’ve said it and it feels good to say it too.

Blacksmiths are heroic figures because they made the tools, weapons and machinery that made our civilisations possible for thousands of years. Without us the world would not have the tools to build and farm in the way we have, other crafts wouldn’t have tools and so on. Because of this blacksmithing was always known as “The King of Crafts” and the Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths in London has as its motto “By the hammer and the hand, all arts do stand”.

So why the confusion? Why is blacksmithing so deeply linked with shoeing horses in the minds of the general public when we don’t shoe horses?

Firstly, we must establish that people who shoe horses are farriers and they rightly have a very proud tradition as a craft in their own right. But a farrier’s skill is in his knowledge of horse’s feet and their care, not in their knowledge of steel and iron and its manipulation which is the blacksmith’s skill base.

Before roughly 1850 the two crafts were completely separate in the minds of most people. Farriers worked much like they do today, in that they mostly were not fixed in a workshop. They went to the horse rather than the horse coming to them. The only difference back then was that farriers had a round that took them about four weeks to complete. Four weeks is roughly how often a working horse needs to be shod. So, the pre-industrial revolution farrier went from one district to another, set up the forge in a local farmer’s barn, shod the horses in that area and then moved on to the next. In the winter when most farm horses had less work to do they were left un-shod so the farrier used this time to make shoes for the coming season and to repair and make his tools.

The blacksmith in contrast worked, as is the case today mostly although not exclusively, in a fixed workshop or forge in rural areas. Their work consisted of mostly tool work: shovels, hoes, hammers, chisels, ploughs and so on. More than likely the forge also supplied all the nails and bolts for the area, a job mostly carried out by the apprentice. Also, some smiths were lucky to have the patronage of the nobility or clergy which allowed them to specialise in decorative work.

The fact is both crafts, Blacksmith and Farrier, were far too busy to be the Jack of all trades as portrayed for the past hundred or so years.

Where the crafts seem to be confused with one another is once the industrial revolution started to push out into the countryside. As the railway rolled out it had two major effects for both crafts. Firstly, there was less work for horses and as a result a reduced need for horses, meaning less work for the farrier. At the same time mass-produced tools and hardware could be easily and cheaply supplied to the public which had a huge effect on the blacksmith’s income. Within a very short space of time both crafts found themselves in decline, as did most crafts at this time. It was not long before farriers and blacksmiths started sharing premises in a bid to economise. Further, they found sharing the costs of an apprentice helped them both. And so, in less than a generation skills in both crafts in rural areas declined; they could only afford to teach the apprentice whatever work came in the door, there being no colleges at this stage.

The final blow came with mass media which naturally portrays what it sees and by this time it saw a solitary person mostly shoeing horses or making the odd hinge and repairing a plough or two. This can be best illustrated by a quick online search for images of the forge. There is almost a complete divide at around 1850: pre-1850 paintings and illustrations of the forge depict three or four people forging tools or weapons, while in the post-1850s era it has become a solitary man making horse shoes.

The Forge Francisco de Goya y Lucientes c.1815-1820

The Forge Joseph Crawhall – circa 1885

The situation continued like this until the 1950s when the two crafts began to separate out again. At this time the larger middle classes kept more horses which meant more work for farriers and with the invention of the automobile it meant they could now go directly to the customer again which enabled them to see more customers in a day, thus making it more profitable. The blacksmith, while not seeing a revival in the need for tools, did however see a renewed interest in decorative hand-forged architectural work, thanks to some of the early twenty first century’s leading designers and architects with their innovative uses of forge work. These people such as Victor Horta, Gaudi and Charles Macintosh helped renew interest in the blacksmith’s skills as an art form and from the 1950s onwards a new generation began to experiment with the forge.

And so, we come to the present day, blacksmiths create craft items for the home, art galleries, public sculptures, monumental architectural iron work and, in some specialized areas, tools and machinery still. If you take the time to look around you, you’ll find a blacksmith in your area. We’re everywhere! And I can almost guarantee that any smith you find is not shoeing horses!

Regional galleries and local artists

There is a growing huge problem in Ireland’s visual art community. Right across Ireland we have regional art galleries that have been built with public money and continue to receive public funding. The problem is that they do very little or nothing to help promote local visual artists. Ireland has a very rich contemporary visual arts culture that is crying out to play its part in the country’s economic revival, but in order to do this we need to increase recognition and exposure.

 

This should start in our regional galleries but the curators in these galleries have no interest in the diverse contemporary art culture that exists around them. This is because they insist they are not interested in “commercial art”. I have to say that in all my time as a sculptor and artist I have never met one artist who would not love to make their living from their art, regardless of the field they work in. The most commercially successful artist of the past fourteen years is Damien Hirst who is a conceptual artist. Damien is estimated to have a personal wealth valued at £215m and employs over 300 people across the UK. This to me sounds like a very considerable commercial company. However, conceptual work like Damien’s is exactable to curators whereas work like mine and my contemporaries is considered provincial and therefore, uninteresting. That said, these galleries have no problem showing commercial films or hosting concerts by commercial singers, bands and stand-up comics who are backed by large companies unlike the local artists they dismiss as commercial. This is a huge double standard. Don’t you think?

 

The very people who are telling us this are not only employed to further art, which includes not only fostering new talent but also broadening awareness of the arts to the general public. Not to mention, these people get a very nice salary, a lot of them claim expenses too, while at the same time telling us, the artists, that it is somehow distasteful to want to earn money from our work. Another double standard?

 

I have been to Arts Council meetings where curators have stated that regional galleries are for conceptual artist only and the rest of us should go off and find commercial galleries. This to me is unacceptable. Conceptual art is not the only show in town and to quote Charles Saatchi[1] “This “conceptualised” work has been regurgitated remorselessly since the 1960s, over and over and over again”. He also went on to say about curators: “They prefer to exhibit videos, and those incomprehensible post-conceptual installations and photo-text panels, for the approval of their equally insecure and myopic peers”. Both of these statements I wholeheartedly agree with. Conceptual art has its place in a rounded visual arts programme but it should not override all other mediums. No one art form should be allowed to dominate all the others, diversity is one of the most important pillars of a good arts programme.

 

To me, publicly-funded galleries should have a primary role and a duty to their communities to raise and broaden cultural awareness of the public who, let’s face it, provide the funding. This is very hard to do when you are only offering a very narrow view of visual art that will only ever appeal to a small select and elite group of people.

 

It is very easy to make public-funded galleries more diverse and supportive to locally-based artists and it would not cost a cent more than is already being spent. All you have to do is to make funding conditional on implementing two policies.

 

1. An open submission policy which would give anyone the opportunity to submit a proposal for an exhibition. At the moment most regional galleries will not accept submissions at all. In fact they don’t even list the staff or curators on their websites so you can’t contact them directly unless you already have inside knowledge.

 

1. They should have a 50/50 policy. This is where 50% of exhibitions held must be from locally-based artists and 50% from national or international ones. Local and international artists should also be shown alongside one another. In this way, the local artist has a chance for their work to achieve greater national recognition. Also, local people who may only come to see local artists will be exposed to international art, helping to broaden their horizons.

 

These two policies are present in many galleries across Europe, such as the Mostyn gallery in Llandudno, North Wales which has received acclaim from critics, artists, the media and public alike. I don’t see why in Ireland we have decided to be so elitist. We know from history that elitism never works and is counterproductive.

 

I know it is very unfashionable for artists to think of themselves as small businesses but the simple truth is we are. We contribute to our communities both financially and culturally, which means that even if it’s not recognised by most people we are a very important cog. If we as a society don’t start seeing that and ask for respect no-one will give it to us. There is no reason why we cannot have artists as successful as Damien Hirst and Antony Gormley here in Ireland helping to employ hundreds of people, creating wealth and generating tax. But it is a lot less likely if we continue to allow this elitism to fester at the heart of the art world here in Ireland.

 

I’m very aware that on the whole politicians don’t know a lot about the art world and in the face of this it is very convenient for them to pass this over to the so called “experts” at the Arts Council. But we, the struggling, working artists in Ireland are the real “experts” here and we are not listened to. I myself will not vote for or support any political party, TD, MEP or councillor who will not publicly call for publicly-funded galleries to implement these two common-sense polices highlighted here. Neither could I support any government in a future election that does not make funding of these galleries conditional on the implementation of such polices. I will encourage my family, friends and colleagues to do likewise.

 

I hope that you will read this and realise that there is huge potential in the visual art field here; that we are allowing our artists to leave the country and set up their practises abroad. How many times have we heard the same story from creative people from Ireland who had to move away to become successful? Not because of a lack of market or interest for our work but for the lack of recognition and opportunity for our un-established artists to be able to show their work in publicly-funded spaces, thus raising their profile. We have been quiet for far too long while administrators have created more and more wealth and jobs for themselves and side-lined artists.

 

 

 

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[1] Saatchi, Charles (2011) The hideousness of the art world. In The Guardian, 2 December.

The state of an art.

 This morning I received in my inbox, information of yet another degree in craft. This time at Crawford College of Art & Design, in Co. Cork, Ireland. It will consist of ceramics, glass and textiles. Once again blacksmiths are not at the table.

I have long thought the blacksmith industry needs to focus some attention on getting our craft into the major art colleges. On the whole, when voicing this idea I’ve been met with mockery, derision, anger, outrage and, thankfully support, at such an idea. Why are we so resistant to new ideas? Surly having small forging departments open for three or four days a month (like some other departments already) in art colleges would be good for blacksmithing. It would provide extra and much needed income for those smiths who feel happy to teach. It would also help to promote our craft in areas some have felt to be blocked off to us. It would allow students to dip their toes in the water and, if they like it, dive in. I’m sure a great many of these students would then go on to fulltime studies in forge work at collages like Hereford in the UK. It would also help to promote our craft to future administrators of the art world. A large amount of art students don’t go on to become practising artists, they become gallery administrators, curators and civil servants. In short, they become the commissioners of future art. Thus, if they aren’t exposed to the forge they are less likely to commission forge work. This is borne out by the fact that very few of us are commissioned by these sorts of institutions.

It feels as if we, as an industry, decided at some point to stop moving forward. To stop building on the monumental efforts of those who helped halt the decline of our craft in the Sixties and Seventies. Smiths I have a great deal of admiration for, without whom I know I would not be doing what I love today. These artists, most of whom are widely known by those of us working in the forge, put in place what became a great endeavour to help blacksmithing survive and move on.

Other crafts did the same, but at some point our paths differed quite significantly. We became content with, on the whole, being a craft. We set up our colleges in rural areas, held the majority of our events in out of the way places and mostly, though not exclusively, shunned the art world, its colleges and galleries.

Crafts such as ceramics at first did the same, establishing colleges in rural areas and so on. But somewhere along the line they began to court the art world, getting small ceramic departments set up in more prominent art colleges and holding events in major metropolitan areas, with exhibitions in contemporary art galleries. In short, ceramicists pushed their way to the front and became a mainstream art form as well as a traditional craft.

You don’t need to take my word for this, all of us already know of ceramics events being pushed by various groups, colleges, galleries and associations. All we have to do is look around us. How many times have you been introduced to someone as a blacksmith and been met with one of the three following remarks:

“You must be one of the last blacksmiths in the country”.

“Do you shoe horses?”

“I thought blacksmiths died out in the Victorian era”.

Ask those same people if they know of ceramics. Not only is it odds-on they know of it, they most likely collect it and know several potters.

The other effects on crafts/art forms like ceramics and glass is that, like us, fifty years ago they were a predominately male dominated industry whereas now they are relatively aligned with national averages in terms of gender employment while our industry has only about 10% of its number being female. This puts us at a huge disadvantage. Any industry that is either mostly male or mostly female from one class or group is in danger of stagnation, becoming irrelevant to whole swaths of society. If we are to move forward we have to recognise that blacksmithing has a poor record in attracting women into the craft and we must look at why women don’t find their way to holding a hammer.

This all leads to one truth in my opinion. We are not diverse enough! We have very few avenues into our craft which has left us isolated among other art forms. We are bogged down in dogmas about how blacksmiths should orientate their business, where and to whom it should be taught and where it should be exhibited and demonstrated.

I’m not saying everyone should be forced to operate in the art world or go to art collage. I, myself, left school with no qualifications and come from a metalwork background, both my father and brother being welder fabricators on the docks of Portsmouth in the UK. What I mean is, disregarding those with successful careers in the art world is counterproductive to our craft. Refusing to acknowledge that other crafts have gained huge advantages by being present in art colleges undermines our craft. Carrying on only promoting our craft in the same way as has been done over the past forty years, with the same results, is not progressing our craft.

Of course, the forge-ins we have are great fun, they are fantastic ways of sharing skills and fostering friendship. All of this is very desirable and something of an edge we have as a craft. But … yes sorry, I have to insert a ‘but’, it does not effectively promote forge work to the other 99.999.999% of the world. Not least because of the way we generally do it as a whole at the moment. The most recurring complaint I hear from other smiths is the public’s lack of awareness of our craft. It would appear to stand to reason that our combined efforts so far have not been effective. So, logic would dictate that we look to promote our craft in different ways, wouldn’t it? Shouldn’t we look at how other crafts and art forms have achieved greater results? Perhaps combined with what we already do so well, it would push blacksmithing into the limelight, and as a result smiths would find it financially much more comfortable?

I don’t know how to end this other than stating that I’m not attacking anyone for what they do. I’m not trying to rubbish people’s efforts over the past fifty years or say it was worthless. As I’ve already said I have a great deal of respect for what these smiths and their families and friends have done and sacrificed for the craft. I simply feel we have problems and we need to look afresh at how to solve them. Otherwise I fear the efforts of the past could be for nothing.