[TheForge] Re: Boston ironwork?

[Mike Spencer]

> http://spectrum.mit.edu/issue/2001-winter/blacksmith-shop/

Thanks, Jim.  I hadn't seen that one.

>From the article...

    The art of bending molten metal returned to the Institute 16 years
    ago, when Materials Science and Engineering Professor Sam Allen,
    then a new aficionado of the craft, inaugurated the subject in a
    Freshman Advising Seminar.

I did my first demo for Sam in 1984 [1], when his forge was still in a
laboratory fume hood.  Not entirely typical of MIT faculty, Sam is one
of the nicest, most generous people you'll ever meet and the kids who
get to be his advisees are fortunate to have that opportunity. Not to
mention, of course, that they get to hammer hot iron, too. :-)

    The allure of hammering hot metal also holds sway in the
    "Technologies and Cultures"  unit of the Integrated Studies
    Program (ISP), one of four alternative, freshman-year programs.
    Directed for the past 12 years by Arthur Steinberg....

The ISP program is, alas, no more and Arthur is now retired to
Professor Emeritus status.  But the MIT Spectrum did a piece on the
ISP program in 1990 with a photo of Yours Truly, hammer in hand, on
the cover.  That was nice. Regrettably, that issue isn't on line.  The
ISP students had four longish sessions in the blacksmith shop after my
demos to make things themselves.  Was a lot of fun.


- Mike


[1] That was the year when some dorque broke into my car in Boston and
    stole my suitcase and topcoat and my wife's knitting bag but
    skipped my chest of blacksmith's tools, my photo portfolio, my
    camera bag and a $2000 sculpture that I sold a couple of hours
    later.  They busted the guy a few days later breaking onto a
    church in Ware with my wife's antibiotics still in his pocket.
    I like to think of him, sitting in an old beater in November under
    an overpass, trying to get high on tetracycline.

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^