With the help of this unique book, all the fascinating properties of iron and other metals can be creatively explored. 52 color plates and 717 b/w photos and drawings present the ideas and examples visually. After a short history of ironwork, the author discusses the ironworking shop, forge and tools, including anvils, vises, hammers, tongs, punches, centrifugal blowers and machine tools. She presents information on building, lighting, and maintaining a fire. Forging procedures are explicitly shown: drawing out, flattening, bending, upsetting, twisting, splitting, punching and drifting, hot...

This important new book tackles the burgeoning revival of the blacksmith's art. Author Dona Meilach has brought together over 500 works by nearly 200 artist-craftsmen from sixteen countries to illustrate the unprecedented activity in modern ironwork that has led to its blossoming into a serious art form. You'll learn several techniques using hot and cold forming with the results clearly shown. You'll be able to recognize how a fence, railing, grille, table, chair, knife, and other items evolve, and better appreciate their design and workmanship. Each chapter provides background for the type...

In the 1930s sculptors began to heat and shape metal directly and a new type of sculpture and artist emerged. This revised and expanded edition retains all the techniques and inspiration to help artists find the answers they needed for creating direct metal sculpture. New chapters update its history over the past quarter century. One new chapter explains the impact public art programs are having on culture in our cities. There are also sections on the impact of the computer on design and marketing of art. This is the latest, most complete, and practical book about an art form destined to...

Here is the first book that focuses on unique custom-made fireplace accessories as works of art by talented modern artist blacksmiths. Over 400 ideas for unusual fireplace designs reflect historical styles from Renaissance to Post-Modern. You will be amazed at the infinite effects that can be wrought from a bar of metal between the hammers and anvils of more than 100 master artist blacksmiths from nine countries. You'll learn to appreciate the forms that are used, from scrolls to carved animals, and to recognize their texturing, unusual handles and hinges, supports, and more. Fire screens,...

There is currently a revival in the art of stone sculpture-along contemporary lines-of the Golden Age in Greece and the Renaissance in Europe. Many noted twentieth-century sculptors are now working directly in stone. This book explains how to create modern stone sculpture, with hundreds of examples by today's top sculptors. Included are sculptures by Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Max Bill, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and many others, illustrated and explained with hundreds of clearly detailed photographs. This is also a how-to book, giving specific, step-by-step instructions for creating...

Here is an exceptional insight into the unique ironwork created by today's artist-blacksmiths. Over 250 color photographs display details of contemporary iron objects, including flowers, grape clusters, leaves, small and large animals that attest to the blacksmith's role as a sculptor. There are amazing scrolls, folds, twists, textures, and weaves not normally associated with the hard material. With heat, hammer, talent, and muscle, the modern artist-blacksmith is forging exciting forms that permeate our surroundings. The casual viewer may often overlook details of small elements used to...

This idea-packed compendium presents the work of today's top wood artists in over 500 photos. More than 130 artists from nine countries are showcased, including furniture makers, turners, and sculptors who borrow ideas and techniques from one another to create their art. Their disciplines have blurred as furniture makers use sculpture and turnings in their work, as turners make furniture and sculpture, and as sculptors throw purism to the winds and use anything and everything to further their expressive ideas. Woodworkers in every discipline will marvel at the creativity, artisanship, and...

Dive into tantalizing, eye-catching objects dubbed "teapots," but be warned, serving tea is not necessarily their purpose. Though many artists are making functional, traditional teapots; other artistic adventurers are brewing up whimsical sculpture. Explore unique designs and materials. With the usual image of a ceramic or silver teapot in one's minds eye, how do you confront a teapot made with holes around the body? Or one made of woven fabrics, of silk with lace and buttons, wood, and coins? You do so with tongue in cheek and an intellectual, fine art sensibility. Dona Z. Meilach tackles...

Hundreds of beautiful color photos display the varied, impressive iron artwork from today's artist-blacksmiths. See a variety of styles, from Modern to Victorian, in original works for homes, offices, and public spaces. This metal art ranges in scope from massive public monuments to small, everyday objects and includes sculpture, gates, railings, furniture, lighting fixtures ranging from chandeliers to lamps and candleholders, doors, locks, and more. Concise text introduces each artist and their work. This book is the second in a series pioneered by the late Dona Meilach and provides readers...

Here is an exciting foray into the world of the artist-blacksmith. Dona Z. Meilach discovers the growing numbers of men and women who revel in lighting up a forge and shaping hot, malleable iron into beautiful, useful objects. Blacksmiths today make both monumental and modest architectural accompaniments, from public art to an infinite number of items we encounter every day. With this book, you will gain an appreciation of the medium and its creators, and realize that blacksmiths do much more than shoe horses. Over 480 color photographs highlight objects for indoor and outdoor use, including...