A Hammer’s Heartbeat

A smith’s hammer drops a rhythm like a heartbeat. Whether the light tap of a chasing hammer or the heavy ring of a forging hammer, the steady sound syncs, one blow at a time to propel the metal where we want it to move, just as, one beat at a time, our hearts propel our iron rich blood where we need it to flow.

Until it doesn’t.

The funny thing about hammering is that a roomful of smiths will naturally sync their hammering to each other. It’s uncanny. With no one in the lead, no chief drummer setting the rhythm, people will, nonetheless, fall into the same beat. When they notice, people always stop and laugh, start hammering again out of sync, and within minutes are back following the collective rhythm. It’s the one quality in which Zoom classes fail and which I miss, however annoying it was to take my earplugs in and out through a day of questions. Even the times I taught in person through migraines, I found it a comforting sound.

The unconscious syncing is called neural synchronization, a mark of social interaction, or entrainment, one trait of which is mammals’ ability to regulate our heartbeats to our earliest caregivers from inside the womb and on into the outside chaos into which we’re born.

The collective heartbeat of hammers went out of sync two weeks ago when Phillip Baldwin passed away. Phillip was someone I admired long before we became friends and someone on whom much of my most daring work depended.

Phillip was a master knife maker, blacksmith, metalsmith, and expert in all things mokume gane. He was the driving force behind Shining Wave Metals, which supplies Reactive Metals’ and Rio Grande’s beautifully patterned sheets and flat (unpatterned) mokume gane sheets and forging rods. (I’ve been informed that details are being worked out for Shining Wave to continue.)

Phillip was one of the artists I invited to work with me on the Links Project to benefit the Society of North American Goldsmiths. His link chapter is in volume 3 of the Linking Our Lineage series for which I served as editor and curator. I worked with a different graphic artist on that last volume, and I was so very pleased when I received the first layout draft with his link on the cover. All the links were all drop dead gorgeous, and Phillip’s link of links was the perfect metaphor for a 3-1/2 year project into which I put my heart and soul.

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​I was drawn to smithing at a very early age and have had the good fortune to have been able to do an aesthetic study of the medium for most of my life. Each investigation opens up endless possibilities, the medium has become even more mysterious than in the beginning.
That is perhaps the best thing, the experimentation, the evaluation, the questioning that is the core of artistic investigation and production. I feel like I’m just beginning.

Phillip Baldwin’s artist statement excerpted from
Linking Our Lineage: 10 Techniques from 10 Master Smiths Volume 3
Edited by Victoria Lansford

He also created the mokume gane sheet of metal that I hammered into the cover for my own book, Giving Voice.

Mokume gane is a centuries old, Japanese technique of fusing different alloys of metal to create a single sheet, then displacing the alloys through punching or hammering, and finally grinding down the surface of the metal to reveal the cross section of all those different alloys. Chemical patinas deepen the alloys’ colors to highlight their contrast. One of my pioneering specializations is patterning the mokume gane metal through the process of Eastern Repousse, an ancient Egyptian forging technique. For the animated version of the cover, I ground off the surface and patinated the sunburst in sections, photographing at each step, so the mokume would appear to crawl across the sunburst. Phillip’s patient willingness to experiment with my ideas of what layers might work where and for how large a sheet of metal made my wild cover concept possible.

From the acknowledgments in my book Giving Voice

The truth is I asked Phillip a whacky question: would it would be possible for him to create a huge sheet (12” x 8”) with the alloy shibuichi as the top layer. That way I could have its shiny coppery rich color as the lettering level of relief on the surface, its purplish color in the background, and selectively grind off the sunburst to show the repousse created, mokume patterning. What ensued was a year’s worth of conversation and experimentation until Phillip was finally satisfied with the sheet he had created. I literally beat that sheet to hell and back, and as with the other special order billets he made for me, nothing flaked, and nothing delaminated. It was the third largest Eastern repoussé work I’d done, the highest relief I’ve achieved, and sheer joy to hammer.

In the days after I learned of his passing, I found it hard to be in the studio. Everywhere was something Phillip had enabled me to create. From my iconic cuffs bracelets to the awards for Giving Voice and even Chris’ and my mokume wedding rings, my space is full of reminders of how much more creative we are in conversation and collaboration with each other. As my husband put it, a lot of my art is made from Phil’s art.

If you’d like to see Phillip at his characteristic best, this episode of this History Channel’s Forged In Fire that he won sums up his expert knowledge, creativity, zen-like and soft-spoken demeanor, genuine humbleness, and love of our craft.

My deepest condolences go to Phillip’s wife Layne Goldsmith and to the rest of our tribe.

You might imagine I haven’t been as on top of things as usual, so please accept my apologies for messing up the links to register for Eastern Repoussé II: Rings & Cuffs. They work now. Registration is back live, and the post-sale prices are even correct!

Registration for Beginning Russian Filigree will open soon, and hopefully I’ll get it right the first time!