[TheForge] Stuart Hill's book

[Mike Spencer]

Yow!  I have a new metalwork book!

I've mentioned Stuart Hill before.  I recently learned that he has
managed to get the last 50 copies a lovely coffee-table book of his
work that was published in Germany in 1999 and is selling them to
raise funds for his current (non-metal) project.  Mine arrived this
week.

   http://www.blurringlines.com/Book.htm

Or go here:

   http://www.freeforvik.com/

and scroll down to "Stuart's book".


My personal fascination with iron has always been its plasticity under
the hammer, the way this rigid, refractory material takes on organic
or even fluid forms when heated and forged.

So I was gobsmacked when I saw Stuart demo at the Ripley ABANA
conference in '82.  In his demo and the slides he showed, he achieved
the same organic and fluid effect, often on a large scale, with a
minimum of actual forging.  He remarked in the demo that he didn't
have the big power hammers that many other smiths did.  Without them he
worked out ways to produce elegant, plastic forms using a cutting
torch, a flypress and, yes, some forging. I've benefited from ideas
picked up at that demo in my own work.

Klaus Pracht, the author of the book, likes to emphasize the way in
which Stuart's clever innovations make it possible to create elegant
gates, rails, fences and grillwork within the often limited budget
that the architect has allowed for such "incidentals".  With an
unlimited budget, you can, of course, have acres of hand-forged
gargoyles, roses, scrolls, gilded acanthus leaves and so on.  But when
the architect said something like, "Oh, take a few bucks and stick
some kind of grill in those openings...", it's hard to compete with
the guy who will weld up some rebar.  Unless you're Stuart Hill, in
which case you come up with one clever technique after the other that
makes relatively inexpensive but stunning metalwork possible.

A couple of guys on TheForge have recently mentioned that their biz is
off very noticeably in these times of financial chaos.  Some clues
from Stuart's book might well make some of your bids more acceptable
without compromising your notions of good design and craftsmanship.
Really.  You have to see what he (or you) can do with some pipe or
angle iron and flypress to believe it.

To get back to my personal thing with hot forging, though: Stuart
demoed hot-forging a frog on the end of a large (2-1/2" maybe) square
bar.  So clever it made my head ache.  (I still have the plasticene
model I made as a form of note-taking.)  Pics of the frog are the
book, too; not a full how-to, but enough to get you started on your
own SH Frog.  (His piece that incorporated the forged frogs won the
big prize at Lindau in '80 and is in the Victoria & Albert.  Also
shown in the book.)


So, the book: Only fifty copies available.  Someone who's on the
ArtMetal forum might want to post this there, too.  And if you're
unable or unwilling to purchase over the net with a credit card, I'm
pretty sure you could pay with a money order sent by snail
mail. (That's how I got mine.)  Email me if you need his email address
and can't find it on his web site.


- Mike


      Stuart Hill -- Metalarbeiten
      ----------------------------
      Klaus Pract & Stuart Hill

      Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, Berlin, 1999
      Text in English and German
      167 pages, hard-cover, many B&W photos
      Price in UK pounds, around CAN$50, US$ a little less.

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Disclaimer: I'm not getting any money or freebies.  I'm just a Stuart
Hill fan.

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