Palace
Pro eii.e
They Shoe Horses, Don't They?
WELL, YES, BUT THAT'S ONLY A SMALL PART OF Wl IAT A BLACKSMITI I DOES,
SAYS TRYON PALACE'S DAVID STONE
By Curl lleiko
Given what century this is, it’s easy
to understand hew visitors who
wander into the blacksmith shop
atTryon Palace I listoric Sites St Gardens
i rii^ht think that David Stone, the man
behind the anvil, is playing the role of a
blacksmith.
Rut they’d be mistaken.
Stone, 36, isn’t t>laying anything.
Anachronistic as it sounds, he actually is a
blacksmith. The genuine, calloused,
rugged, soot-smudged, forge-tending, five-
days-a-week article.
“I dc >n’t really look at myself as an actor at
all, "says Stone. "1 see myself as a blacksmith
who happens to Reworking here.”
This fact, of course, leads to occasit >nal
and understandable episodes of confusion
—as it must in the 21st century — such as
when visitors happen upon the shop while
Stone is doing one of the many things a
blacksmith must do that don’t involve
pt >u ni ling away at a slab of molten i r< >n
with a large hammer. Cleaning up, for
instance. Or quietly filing away on a knife
blade.
Invariably, it seems, the visitors will tell
Stone they want to see him “work.”
“I have to explain to them that on some
things you make, using the lile is the vast
majority of what you do, as opposed to
hammering on it," Stone says. “If you
make a spring or a knife blade, it’s only a
tiny fractk >n of the time yot t spend ( >n
bearing on it.”
Then again, it you're going to be a
blacksmith at the start of the third
millennium, a little misunderstanding
now and then comes with the territory,
lots of folks these days, it seems, don’t
have a clear picture anymt ire of exactly
what a blacksmith does. The level of
misunderstanding, Stone says, varies
with age.
“A lot of older people who come
in remember the smithies in the
towns where they grew up. Middle-
age people think all the blacksmith
does is shoe horses. Young children
are generally open and really
interested, if they’ve ever given any
thought to where things come from.
But a lot of people have inaccurate
notions of what the role was like in
the old clays, and I'll always have
grown-ups coming in and telling
their children that the blacksmith
shop was where everything was
made— which it wasn't, really. Not
the local one.
You had a great deal of things
imported from Europe already
made, and I spend a
к
>t of my time
explaining that the blacksmiths
spent the majority of their time
repairing things that were already
made — straightening things,
sharpening things, mending broken
and bent, mutilated and worn-out
tools.”
“1 laving someone with Stone’s
skills around is a major resource for
a place like Tryon Palace I listoric
Sites &. Gardens," says Simon
Spalding, living history programs
Tryon Palace blacksmith David Stone spends much of his
time helping to set t/ie historical record straight.
high. Among his recent projects:
duplicating early 1 9th-century window
hardware and cooking utensils for the
Robert 1 lay 1 louse, shutter hardware and
hinges for the William 1 lollister House,
and 1 8th-century tools for the Palace
kitchen.
"There’s a thousand and one little
things that need to be made or reworked
c >r 1 ixed,” he says. “ 1 do a lot of st range and
weird things at times." ♦
“There’s only so much you can glean
from books," explains Spalding. “A lot of
the most essential informant in
«
in any of
the historic trades comes from someone
who, like David, has absorbed all of the
book learning but has then made it real by
act ually duplicati ng the histc irical
processes."
Stone, a native of Sanford, N.C., who
has plied the smithy trade at Tryon Palace
tor a decade, is also a pretty handy guy to
have around at a place where the need for
handmade historical artifacts always runs
Summer 2001
3
