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I began my blacksmithing journey in 2022 after finally indulging a lifelong fascination with the craft.
The name “Raven Shadow” has both a literal and a metaphorical meaning. The year I built my shop, the site I chose was located directly under the flight path of a family of nesting ravens that would fly daily to the compost pile on our small farm. Thus, the forge itself lies quite literally in the ravens’ shadow. Ravens have long held a place of honor as my favorite bird species for their intellect (which rivals that of non-human primates), creativity, social complexity, and unique vocal range.
The metaphorical explanation is a bit more complicated. In Norse mythology, the god Odin had two ravens that would fly forth daily and return to him with knowledge of the world of Midgard where humans dwelled. Their names were Huginn and Muninn, commonly translated as “Thought” and “Memory”. By extension, one can infer that they carried knowledge, wisdom, and experience.
After having spent the better part of three decades in prehospital, emergency, and critical care medicine beginning at a very young age, I carry my share of memories and experience that I would often be happy to forget. Thus, the name is also a nod to the darker side of knowledge and the shadow it casts once gained.
There is a magic in the alchemy of blacksmithing, using intense heat and the blows of a hammer to mold steel into both useful and beautiful things. Cold steel is hard and implacable, occasionally brittle and prone to shatter under force depending on its chemical composition (there are many types) and temper. And yet under the right conditions it is malleable, forgiving of error, and capable of subtle refinement. In my shop I work to create art with techniques that have an ancestral memory spanning millennia. My anvil, a Fisher from the early to mid-19th century, works as well today as it did during the Civil War. Many of the items that I make will endure and have continued use long after all memory of their creator is forgotten, and this is reassuring to me somehow.
Much of my instruction has come from both written text and particularly the internet, and I am greatly indebted to the following people among others for their knowledge and skill:
John Switzer (Black Bear Forge); Roy Adams (Christ Centered Ironworks); Oscar Duck (Carter and Duck Blacksmiths Ltd); Nicholas Wicks (Wicks Forge); Sam Towns, Bladesmith; Alex Norton (Valhalla Ironworks); Niels Ogren; Mark Aspery
