What makes a good museum smithy?

[AndrewOC]

Hi All,

There has been a call for comment on an 'interpretive strategy' for the historical Eveleigh Railway blacksmith's shop (at Redfern, Sydney, Australia), see http://rappoport-px.rtrk.com.au/reports/industrial

 

What do you, my fellow smith's, think would best present this old joint?

A search on our venerable forum came up with this interesting old thread;

 

What other issues would have to be over come?

 

Other similar examples in Australia are;

Inveresk (Launceston, Tasmania) http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/qvmag/index.php?c=31

which I find sadly sterile and inert.

Ipswich, Queensland; http://www.theworkshops.qm.qld.gov.au/Events+and+Exhibitions/Exhibitions/Permanent/Heritage+Railway+Workshops+Tours

which I haven't had the pleasure of visiting yet.

 

What have you seen- give good points and bad.

 

Cheers,

AndrewOC 

[David Einhorn]

My reaction to the "call for comment on an 'interpretive strategy'" is one of being extremely uncomfortable.  Instead of just setting up a blacksmith shop where visitors can come and talk to a smith, and instead of talking to other museum blacksmith shops and seeing what they are doing and what works for them.....  I get the impression of very rich folks in very expensive suits sitting around a board room hiring expensive consultants to do studies on public opinions so that they can put together (from looking at the examples presented) immaculate dust free sterile displays of someone's idealized blacksmith shop. 

 

Around here, setting up and operating a historic shop isn't rocket science, just doing what the other historic shops tend to do, which is to decide the time period presented, set up a shop with equipment to reflect that, fence off a visitor area, keep presentations and projects to 15 minutes or less, and if possible have one smith working while the other smith talks to the public.  A smith presenting in one historic shop, around here, is likely to feel comfortable walking into another historic shop, picking up a hammer and presenting to the public.  Safety concerns for the public are the number one concern, and how things are presented are pretty much the same.

 

My humble recommendation is to visit some historic museum shops with a live presenter, and to acquire one or more guide books written for presenters at historic museum blacksmith shops by the folks in the blacksmith guild that support the musuem shop(s).

 

Or am I totally misinterpreting what I am looking at here?

[MLMartin]

I believe having all the projects in the shop limited to 15 minutes would be terrible. There is pretty little that can be done in such a short time.

 

While the time period may be off for a 100 years or so I would very seriously look at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. They have a wonderful forge shop and they have a large attendance. This shop has 3 or 4 people working every day. One smith takes a hour off and talks to the public as they come in and tells about all the work the others are doing in the back ground and the rest of them work away. So the smiths rotate though talking while a lot of work is being produced. Having one of the smiths speak is key, the smith know exactly what the other people are doing and can truly explain the work. Hiring just a actor to speak has worked poorly at other historic forge shops as they just read a script and know little about the actual work.

 

Having a few people truly working while one person speaks gives a accurate show of work done in the time period. When there is only one person in the shop there is no time for them to demonstrate the work because they spend the whole time speaking to the public. A person can not engage the audience and produce good quality works at the same time. 

 

Colonial Williamsburg produces wonderful highly accurate reproductions of many goods. The items are so well made that there is a large call from them in other historic parks in the US representing 1700 -1800

 

Good luck

I hope to see a great working historical shop!

[ThomasPowers]

1: setting a firm date

2: deciding what kind of smithy it will be!

3: making an appropriate display---so often museum smithys are overwhelmed with items when the original ones may have been rather sparse in many areas.  (I;ve seen "pioneer" blacksmith shops with stacks of heavy anvils, fancy wheelwright equipment, etc)

4:  Have more than 1 person---having just a smith in a shop was very much the exception historically---till recent times when many smiths rode their craft down till retirement or death. Guess what folks "remember".

5: TEACH the smiths about the period!!!!  You can be a world class smith and still not know when they started switching from charcoal to coal, or when modern mild steel started edging out real wrought iron. HOWEVER if you are "presenting history" you ought to know the basics for your time and place!  Knowing more about the context is great too. I have a friend who was the smith at a LH set up in OH set in the 1860's and he could discuss "current events"  with the visitors.

6: Generally it's very difficult to have a smithy be both a teaching tool and a profit center. OTOH it can be a great adjunct in restoration and maintenance of a historical site!

[Jim Kehler]

I love the video you posted in a different thread, I would like to see the equipment demonstrated as in that video but realize that the overhead involved in maintaining large presses and hammers is daunting never mind the cost of heating up big pieces of steel.

Maybe occasional demonstrations would be viable with an addmission charge, Im not paying the bills but if I were in Austalia I'd have that on my things to do list.

[mike-hr]

So many great ideas have been 'killed by committee'. We gotta keep everything before 1148 AD...I give time to the historic museum in Weaverville, California. It's a 1849 gold rush era place. The museum, in a bold strike of common sense, asked the folks volunteering as instructors what should happen to get the community involved. They realize most stuff can be made with charcoal used in last nights campfire. What they do now, is "get folks started". They have a ying-ang hammer out back, I donate tooling that has been TIG welded, the chairman hunts the steel pile at the dump for resources. The bottom line is, for some reason, the whole thing works. There's zero trade secrets, we all give face time while demonstrating to anyone who walks up, the local motels fill up when we invade for the annual hammer-in, and by Sunday there's no more Scotch in town. I've been to a lot of doings on the west coast USA, and this little museum wins, hands down. It's a paradigm shift. Make stuff easy for folks to attend, and everybody wins. Everybody in your town knows what went on at the period your venue is supposed to represent. Embrace that, make the price cheap, and then,,, go behind the façade, and 'get the community started'.

[AndrewOC]

Great  stuff guys.

David, sounds like you have seen these reports before!  It does introduce a theme of "live/ interaction Interpretation' and 'activities and processes associated with the knowledge or use of mechanical arts and applied sciences'' (phew) - which I translate as a working workshop. 

Eveleigh operated from 1887 to 1988, so a broad 20th century scene should be ok, main focus could be industrial machine based- steam driven.

 

MLMartin, I like particularly the idea of making quality items; there is a 1500 ton press after all.

 

Thomas, good advice and  '#6-teaching and profit' is a tempting challenge, see; http://www.canberraglassworks.com/live-glassmaking/  

 

Jim, getting the machines on steam again would be a rare coup (like; 

[iron woodrow]

something like blists hill would be great.

While I enjoy a visit to the workshops at Ipswich, it doesn't go far enough with showing the intensity of the heavy work.

on the other hand, a static display is boring, and dead.

just my 1:00 AM ramble.

[Frank Turley]

^{One could write reams. I had an antique dictionary once that described a museum as "a repository for learned curiosities." Period. That was it. The idea that a museum could serve the public as an interpretive and educational institution came much later.}

 

^{In the U.S., many of the museum smithies are designed for hand work of the 18th and 19th centuries. Small things can be made and sold or given to the audience.}

^{Near to Santa Fe, New Mexico, we have a ranch museum* that covers 200 acres and attempts to show the Spanish influence on the area. It is part of the "living historical farm" movement whose  concept began in Scandinavia. A few times a year, the museum has an open house weekend where working demonstrations are open to the public. What is shown is the small blacksmith shop; two grist mills; a donkey powered sorghum mill (for molasses); weaving; embroidery; and livestock. In the interim when there are no open houses, the museum is involved in maintenance, conservation of items, collections, cataloging, and hosting meetings. Of course, they are also preparing events for the upcoming open houses. I mention this as just one approach showing that a museum does not need to be open to the public on a year round basis.}

 

^{An industrial shop would need lots of careful interpretation, because the conventional wisdom says that a blacksmith is a horseshoer who wears a size 50 shirt and can look through a keyhole with both eyes (at once). I think that a large viewing screen depicting the noise and operation of the presses and hammers would help to shake that conventional concept. This should be done with explanations of the heat source, open and closed die forging, what is being made, what is that stuff falling [scale], why this is not  a foundry,  etc. After seeing the clip, the machinery would make more sense, even if it were not moving nor in use.}

 

^{Museums that house collections in buildings normally operate on what they call the "iceberg concept;" 80% is in storage whicle 20% is being exhibited. The exhibits are occasionally changed by an exhibitions staff working with the curators. They are usually dealing with movable items, although some might be quite large...nothing like permanently installed presses and hammers, however.}

 

^{We have people nowadays who major in "Museology," but that doesn't mean much unless they have an understanding and collaboration with the museum directors, curators, exhibitions people, and the public.}

 

^{* "El Rancho de las Golondrinas"}

 

^{Sayings and Cornpone}

^{"Don't start vast projects with half vast ideas."}