Forging a career through the fires of blacksmithing

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Forging a career through the fires of blacksmithing

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In Mrs. Stock’s Park, a flourish of iron leaves reach up to the sky with the surrounding fall foliage. The flower comes to its peak with the pointer of a sundial. The creator of this untraditional sundial is Joel Sanderson.

Sanderson gave up studying English to pursue fascination in blacksmithing, which has been his life-long career.

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He owns his own business, Sanderson Iron, in Quincy, Michigan, and recently made the sun dial in Mrs. Stocks Park on Broad St. Yet, he has been making art with iron all his life.

Sanderson started his career with iron when he was 13. Working with his grandfather’s 19th-century forge sparked his interest in working with metals. From that point, he was always around the fire, heating iron.

“That was when I started to do forging and decided I want to do it more,” Sanderson said.

He pursued teaching at Western Michigan University, but he never stopped smithing. He spent his weekends and vacation by the fire. In his senior year of college, Sanderson decided to give up everything and focus entirely on his dream.

“There was very little creativity, and I did not like the classroom environment,” he said. “As I pursued metal more and more, I got more and more entreated by it. I was wondering, why am I studying anything but what I am interested in?”

At college, he also took classes such as metallurgy — the studies of the properties of metal — and jewelry to develop his interest. He said those classes, especially jewelry clas, were influential.

“With jewelry, you have to pay so much attention to detail because it is only about detail,” he said. “The class made me to look at metal working in new perspective and to become even more fascinated. And before, I was only a kid playing with iron by myself without anyone judging me, but in that class, the professor was really critiquing my work and teaching me how to look at it critically.”

Over the next five years, he worked as an assistant blacksmith for Black Swamp Forge in Ohio, during his part-time bladesmithing business, and worked as a machinist and a die maker for Arrowsmith Forge in New York. During this period, he was able to strengthen the his education of metalworking.

“I made custom items for individuals in Ohio, and I made many identical pieces to sell to local stores in New York,” Sanderson said. “That allowed a very different approach.”
He returned to his home studio in 1998, and started to search for rare 19th and early 20th century metalworking machines, which allow works of unprecedented form and beauty.

He now has more than a dozen machines more than a century old, and several survived from the past era. As he works with antique machinery, Sanderson combines methods from the past with new inventive approaches for working iron.

One example of this is the Mrs. Stock’s Park sundial.

“There is a dew drop in the structure of sun dial where we let our past go as we still continue on into the future,” Michelle Loren, director of Parks and Recreation of Hillsdale, said. “That drop of water goes back into the ground and goes again. It means a whole cycle of future versus past. That was all Sanderson’s concept and suggestion, to give a message of do not move backward, always move forward.”

The master gardener of the park, Diane Miller said the local residents are curious about the sun dial because it is so unusual.

“It has a very different design from others, but functions perfectly as a sun dial,” Miller said. “It is really good to have a practical reference in a historical park.”

Sanderson said she hopes to have more colleagues doing artwork with iron. He thinks the society down plays art and crafts and makes them left legitimate.

“I really enjoy my work, and wish there were more blacksmiths,” Sanderson said. “More people know better, more architecture about iron, and more awareness for the craft. The more I work, the more I get, and the more people get.”