Blacksmiths Simon Bushell and Joseph Robinson held hands-on sessions with their Nowhere Forge during the half-term holidays at Stroud’s Museum in the Park.
Taking place in the museum’s Walled Garden, children had the opportunity to make coat hooks or rings from ordinary nails by heating them in the forge and shaping them into new objects.
“The Nowhere Forge is a little portable forge workshop that I built. It’s run off solar power and that powers a little electric fan. We’ve also got hand-cranked fan, so you can operate it by hand. That powers the other forge, and what I do is I take it around to wherever anyone needs some blacksmithing doing,” explained Simon.
“We’ve got ordinary nails, and we turn them into coat hooks, and into little pendant things. It’s just a nice example to show what you can do with material and it’s a nice simple, quick, operation that’s easy for kids to do.”
The event was part of the final week of the museum’s Earth Fire Iron programme, which was centred around the work of Stroud blacksmith, Alan Evans (1952-2023).
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