"I came to the forge not as an artist, but as a craftsman.  As a child, I would often find myself looking at a tool or object, wondering about the person who made it:  What was this person like, what happened to them? Did they realize that this "thing" would outlast them? Did they intend it to?  For me, blacksmithing is as much about bringing an ancient past to the present as it is about creating the heirlooms of tomorrow.  I liken blacksmithing to the preservation of a dying language by continuing the dialog of hand and hammer, hammer and anvil, and preserving the vocabulary of direct ironwork.  Steel can be coaxed into infinite shapes through the processes of forging, but few of those shapes are truly the original creations of the smith doing the work. Everything comes from a few basic processes:  drawing, upsetting, fullering...

Like language, it's a matter of placing the right sounds in the right order.

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Since 1998, Stuart Hill has been a provider of custom forged and fabricated metalwork to architects, designers, and contractors throughout the Rocky Mountain region.  Photographed examples of his work have been published in

Art and Antiques, Luxe, Design and Architecture of the West, Natural Home, and Timber Home Living magazines.

 

Stuart Hill is a member of the Artist Blacksmiths Association of North America and the Rocky Mountain Smiths.