One of the high points of the weekend in Mystic was a meeting in the blacksmith's shop. It was a gathering of (mostly) men who are interested in blacksmithing. I appreciate the interest in bygone ways of doing things and lost arts. It's refreshing to find people that are still interested in crafting things by hand, as these people are, in our increasingly digital world. The physicality and the labor intensiveness of the work seem the exact antithesis of our digital present. At the same time, while so many of us are making out livelihood away from it, our physical being is still tied to that world, we still need, will always need things. Ships still need to be built, and not everything can be done by a machine, at least not yet. So here are two of the head blacksmiths, who host these meetings at the Mystic Seaport Museum, and teach others the craft.
