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- Chloe Darke: It's hard to have just one reason
why I really love this ancient craft.
There are just so many reasons to love it
because it's so old
and it's almost like I'm continuing a legacy
of different metalsmiths and female smiths of the past.
And maybe someday,
I'll pass this down to somebody else
so it's almost like your own little legacy
that you're contributing to.
- Robert Lapham: First impressions of Old Newbury,
I saw men sitting at anvil blocks
[metallic pounding]
and using big heavy hammers and pounding away at silver bars
with patterns of spoons and forks all over the wall.
It captivated me, quite frankly, although I realized
that I was being hired to be one of these men.
- Geoffrey Blake: Silvermaking started actually in this area in the 1600s
and the fact is
that it really has changed very little in centuries.
The tools are essentially the same.
- Robert Lapham: Of course, we certainly know of Paul Revere.
One of the things I'm amused about is that
if Mr. Revere could come back in this day and age,
I and my colleagues would be some of the few people
he could probably really identify with.
and maybe, hopefully, he'd be pretty proud
that the craft has lasted this long.
So, I retire, and within a couple of months,
lo and behold, the company did hire a young woman.
She's about 22 years old.
And she is a marvelous, marvelous crafts person.
[hammering]
Not only that,
she was tenacious in terms of wanting to work here.
- Chloe Dark: Right after I graduated,
I came in for the first time
and said, "Hi, I'm graduating from Maine College of Art
"and it would just be a dream for me to work here.
Will you hire me?" [laughs]
- Charlene Morin: I said, I'm not really sure.
We can see what we can do.
And she handed me this CD and I looked at it and I go,
"Wow, this girl is talented."
So, I took her resume and her CD and I sent it to our corporate.
- Chloe Darke: I got called and he said,
"We're really intrigued that such a young woman
"would be interested in this
"and we'd be really interested to meet you and talk,
and then, see about hiring you."
So, that was in May.
Even though they'd expressed
a desire to meet me and interview me,
nothing really came of that so I would call every week.
I was just so determined to work here.
I really wanted to do this.
- Geoffrey Blake: She was persistent and they hired her.
She came here already with the built-in love for this craft,
whereas most of us,
our affection for it grew over a period of time.
[pounding]
- Chloe Darke: Well, I think there's such a rebirth of craft
with people in my generation who are really interested
in traditional ways of making things.
It's the reason why I like this process
is because it is so physical
that you're using almost your whole body,
almost like you're pouring all of your life energy
into this one piece.
It's sort of an intimate process, too,
just knowing the material,
knowing how you're gonna hit it.
How it's going to react to your hammer blows.
[hammering]
Well, I do agree there's something special
about the hammering and shaping of the silver,
the forging of it
in taking a bar of silver
and producing an intricate serving piece.
[hammering]
By the fact of you're really reshaping the silver,
moving the silver with the hammer and the anvil.
It is just a very special feel of accomplishment.
Some people have expressed the thought
that now just sitting at the anvil all the time
and just making flatware is so tedious,
but I compare that to shuffling papers on a desk or something.
And I'd say that,
making flatware is not, not tedious.
With all the 28 different patterns,
you're constantly making something different.
- Charlene Morin: When I first came to Old Newbury Crafters,
silver was $5 an ounce.
Today, silver is $38 an ounce.
- Geoffrey Blake: Sterling is 92.5% fine silver
and 7.5% copper.
If you did pure silver for this, it would be much too soft
and not really practical for making an eating utensil.
The copper does give it rigidity,
and as you hammer the piece, it gets harder
to the point where you have to stop and re-soften the metal.
[blow torch hisses]
The other thing about forging sterling is that
when we are finished with the piece, it is quite hard.
So it's going to be able to maintain its shape
over years and years of usage.
We say to people,
when they lament about having to polish silver,
"Don't polish it; use it every day.
"This stuff is built to last.
It's good and strong because of that forging process."
- Charlene Morin: Hi, I have a rush to order for Judi Bradley.
Can you do two tablespoons by Thanksgiving?
- Yes.
- If we have the silver to do it.
- Okay. - Charlene Morin: Thanks.
You can buy a stainless steel set
and you can have that stamped out anywhere.
You cannot have a handmade piece of silver
made just anywhere.
And as far as I know,
we are the only ones in the country that are producing it.
It's very exciting
to have a grandmother pass down her silver to her daughter.
She passes it on to her daughter.
And then, her daughter passes it on to her daughter.
It's amazing the generations of silver.
And then,
if they lose a piece of their silver,
they're heartbroken.
And they come back to me and they said,
"We've lost this piece.
Are you still making it?"
And we are!
And we can replace it.
- Geoffrey Blake: Many of our customers have told me
that when they have dinner guests,
oftentimes, the silver
becomes the main conversation at the dinner table.
[sanding silverware]
I think I now understand why.
It's individuals making individual pieces.
- Charlene Morin: Customers do ask for specific makers.
They have a favorite that they love,
and that's who they want to make it.
- Geoffrey Blake: There are little trademarks of my work
that are there in the pieces that I make.
Perhaps a little bit of subtle difference
in appearance of the bend.
It's not a great difference
because we are still manufacturers of silverware,
and so, they all have to look very much alike
but there are, there are subtle differences.
*
As in colonial times, they made silver very smooth,
but they didn't like leaving hammer marks
and it was sort of a sign of bad workmanship.
And the Old Newbury silver was made in that same tradition
until the early sixties
when the stores that we were selling to
said that a lot of the customers didn't believe it was handmade
because there weren't hammer marks in it.
And so, we started leaving some more of the subtle texture
of the forging in the silver.
- Chloe Dark: The first stamp that we use says, "HANDWROUGHT,"
so you know it that it's handmade
and not just machine produced.
The second stamp says, "ONC sterling."
"ONC" standing for Old Newbury Crafters,
and "sterling," sterling silver.
And the last piece that we stamp is our maker's mark.
- Charlene Morin: Every silversmith has their own maker's mark
of their choosing.
They choose whatever they would like to have
stamped on the back of the sterling silver flatware piece
that they make.
- Geoffrey Blake: This unicorn stamp happened to be here
so I just adopted it as my own
because I was making silver
and I needed the stamp to put on it.
And so, I've had it for 41 years.
I'll take it with me, yes.
- Chloe Darke: My makers mark is called a "triskelion"
or sometimes a triple spiral.
And it's actually an old Celtic symbol.
I've always really liked it
just for its beauty and simplicity.
And also, philosophically,
it's really intrigued me because it is so old
and throughout the years, it meant different things
to different people.
For example, there are a lot of Celtic pagan goddesses
that were often depicted as the triple goddess
where they had three aspects of themselves,
usually as like a young innocent,
and then a maternal figure,
and then, finally, an old wise woman.
And then, actually, when the Christians
were converting a lot of the Celts to their religion,
they kept a lot of those ancient pagan symbols,
but gave them a Christian smitten.
So then, it became a symbol for the Holy Trinity.
[banging]
- That looks good.
- Chloe Darke: Geoff is a really great teacher
because he is critical when he needs to be,
but he always does it
in a way that's very friendly and kind.
I never feel like he's telling me,
"You're not good enough to work here," you know.
There were a few challenges when I came in.
For example the hammers that we use are five pounds.
And although I'd done a lot of raising and forging before,
I'd always used much smaller hammers.
So, that was a little bit difficult to adjust to
because I wasn't used to the kind of weight.
Yeah, it's usually like, my right bicep and my left forearm
are, like, very strong, and then, the opposite, not so much.
Kind of awkward. [giggles]
For me, I thought, "Yeah, it is special
to be a female silversmith and metalsmith."
It's always sort of been male-dominated environment.
[cutting]
As far as this company is concerned,
I'm the first woman to come in and actually forge.
[hammering]
Part of the reason why they're intrigued about hiring me
is because I'm young and I'm a woman,
and they haven't had anybody like me here. [laughs]
If I'm talking about working here at Old Newbury Crafters,
it's really important that something has to function.
But in my own personal studio work,
I'm focusing more on aesthetics.
It's about expressing an idea
and sort of getting that idea out there
in a form that maybe people aren't used to
and make something that is utilitarian,
but approach it in a way that,
from a day-to-day basis, it wouldn't be interacted with.
Because I was really interested in different gender roles.
What it means to sort of
own your body and owning your sexuality.
Vessels are really perfect for that
because it's a really old metaphor for the body.
The vessel, because they contain things just like we do.
If you're a woman, sometimes,
you know, you might have a child,
and during that time, it's like you're containing.
You're this sacred vessel containing,
you know, a new life inside of you.
I just wanted to make them objects of empowerment
and saying, like, "Yes, I own myself.
This is who I am and I'm not ashamed of that."
- You look good.
- Straight down the middle still.
- And this sits on the table nicely and that's that.
Just sort of amazed me
that you can take this technology
that's been around for so long
and make functional work like we do
or conceptual art,
and there's just so many applications
to this process.
So, it's really exciting.
It's almost like, "The sky's the limit."
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