Maybe it's just people? C.S. Lewis posited the reason for common myths was that it was imperfect abstractions of truth sent by God. Which begs the question of why you would send a message without someone to properly interpret it, but maybe he had an explanation for that too; I was never really satisfied by it. Jung has his archetypes, drawn from the collective unconscious. I kinda like the Larry Niven explanation, maybe the mana just faded away.

Speaking of shared mythos and what was this site about again? Oh yeah...there's the myth of the deformed, crippled or lame blacksmith god that seem to run deep. The Egyptian God Ptah had it, Hephaestus was no bueno, Vulcan is the same guy, Wayland was hamstrung or had the tendons of his feet cut, depending on how you read it, and some versions of Gobannus have him lame as well, although since he was sort of celtic, sort of roman, that's not as surprising.

Wayland the Smith | Religion Wiki | Fandom

I only dabbled in the commonality of mythos for a bit a few years ago but feel C.S. Lewis was close.

Ahhh, the question you beg has been asked for probably hundreds if not thousands of years. My thought meets Occam's Razor nicely and doesn't require sites, quotes, etc. Please don't take this as a dive into religion, I challenge none. My thought goes like this, the mind of a being who could create the universe, maybe all the universes from designing quanta to the orbits of Glactic clusters on up has a mind so incomprehensible to mere humans that the simplest statement it could make to us would probably require generations to interpret at all let alone "understand."

Rather than Mr. Lewis's thought I feel it's just "racial" memory of millions of years of experience, the best explanation a non scientific tradition can provide and the drift inherent in oral tradition.

I'm less surprised that the gods and demi-gods of blacksmithing are one eyed and or crippled. Think about it, when were safety glasses of any kind developed? Losing your second eye would mean retirement, period. Heavier injuries could well be crippling in the ages before sanitation, penicillin and effective surgery. American, Civil War surgeons tended to just amputate and cauterize, sometimes for relatively minor injuries, say a broken leg.

Then consider how often ancient kings or lesser rulers thought of themselves as second only to God, say Devine Right. A master blacksmith with some proprietary methods could well be so valuable the "owner" couldn't afford to lose him, hamstringing tends to slow a fellow down. 

Don't forget the miners and makers of iron and steel. Damascus steel for example is designated with a regional name and literally is no longer available without advanced exotic alloying tech. The iron ore that made true Damascus came from a small region and contained beneficial metallic impurities. Please forgive my generalizing, I don't have my book close and am not going to look for it online though I have seen it there. I believe Al Panderay researched the very mine, wrote a book in fact. 

Anyway, the ore produced a steel unique to a specific area and mine (zone?) and was traded primarily in Damascus.

I have a pretty crazy long text in audio on my Kindle that is something like 30 hours worth of mythological listening that goes into some pretty extensive detail and high lights how similar myths are around the world. Some are virtually identical with god and place name changes. 

I need to make sure I have that text loaded, I listen to it every couple years. I identify with the Irish versions but seeing the same basic stories told in India is cool if dizzying. 

Frosty The Lucky.

On 12/2/2024 at 2:20 PM, Frosty said:

the mind of a being who could create the universe, maybe all the universes from designing quanta to the orbits of Glactic clusters on up has a mind so incomprehensible to mere humans that the simplest statement it could make to us would probably require generations to interpret at all let alone "understand."

  Maybe that's why we have a nervous system that say's "ouch" when we get burned.  

  I'll take this opportunity to wish all good tidings, Merry Christmas and a very prosperous New Year.

Could be Scott, I'd like to think a nervous system is even more practical. Don't KNOW and that's okay with me. I would like to turn down the volume on the pain receptors though.

I only have one small thing to add to your Christmas wish, Scott. I pray all people on Earth find peace and the capacity to live with and forgive all, no matter what aspect or face of God you speak with. 

Be well Brothers and Sisters.

Frosty The Lucky.

On 10/21/2024 at 3:24 PM, JHCC said:

Facebook just suggested to me a link for an art gallery selling a sculpture entitled "The Blacksmith of Solingen" by Wilhelm Albermann (1835-1913). Here are some photos:

Sadly, I couldn't find the sculpture anymore, it has been given away.

But I've got another interesting thing, the model of a large bronze sculpture depicting a blacksmith and his apprentice. The sculpture is standing on an old marketplace, in the same place there's been a sculpture of a weapons smith, until its destruction in 1944.

The original can be found here: https://solingen.de/inhalt/verzeichnis/artWork/19

Cheers!

Ennepetal. marketplace

Thanks for the pic and name of the location. Lots of good web searching if I could only find my translation program I'd know what they said. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Just in time for Christmas!

(Copied from a Facebook post that unfortunately did not have anything about the artist or date. Judging from the style and the fact that Santa is shown wearing red and white, I’m guessing late 19th century.)

It kind of looks like Santa is wishing the little girl would let him get back to work. 

Frosty The Lucky.

8 hours ago, wicon said:

Ennepetal. marketplace

I did an image search and found this site, translated from German. 

CLOSE UP - The Road Industry Museum in Ennepetal-Milspe

From the text:

• The museum is open 365 days a year and is free to enter. It tells the story of around 400 years of metalworking in Ennepetal. An open-air experience around the clock. My series represents only a small fraction of what can be seen.

Here's another: Wharton Esherick's 1924 woodcut "The Hammersmen", originally produced as an illustration for the Centaur Press edition of Walt Whitman’s "The Song of the Broad-Axe":

Not the best image, but this is “The Honest Voter” from the cover of the October 19, 1872 issue of “The Illustrated Christian Weekly”, showing a blacksmith refusing to be bribed for his vote. 

 

Mid-19th century German print. I'm afraid I don't know anything more about it.

Ca. 1895 photochrome of the blacksmith at a Colorado mine. For those who prefer their smithy with a view.

  And fresh air.  

  Here's a waterwheel contraption.  

I love these bits of old timey are you post Scott. Contraption is right, I wonder if the illustrator ever saw a water wheel powered blacksmith shop.

Thanks for the pic.

Frosty The Lucky.

Non-IFI member Bob Miller posts these photos of blacksmith sculptures in Finland:

 

On 4/11/2025 at 3:51 PM, Frosty said:

I wonder if the illustrator ever saw a water wheel powered blacksmith shop.

  I doubt it.  Look how close his head is to that crank.  Might make a fun automated diorama.  A lot of bad engineering in that one.

2 minutes ago, Scott NC said:

Look how close his head is to that crank.

Severely foreshortened. Compare the position of the post that supports the crank to the position of the anvil stand; also, consider the position of the anvil stand relative to the smith. He's actually a good bit forward of the danger zone.

  Touché.  Just don't let the apprentice wander around too much.  Or come into work with a hangover and get your head or other body parts tangled up around that thing.  

The image links you posted don't work for me John, I get a bad signature message when I enlarge one.

The crank being close to the smith's head isn't the problem, it's the whole purpose of the crank that smacks of an artist who isn't at all mechanical. Look what the crank does. It transmits reciprocating motion to an arm on a shaft that extends to the roof and to another arm that transmits the motion to a lever on a pivoting beam that connects to the bellows via long connecting rods.

The hammer itself is difficult to see at all but I can imagine a mechanism that COULD work driven by what I see. 

I'm thinking a periodical or broadsheet type illustration. 

Old illustrations are interesting, they give a glimpse at how people did things as well as how journalists tried to describe things they didn't understand. I use "journalist" to mean folks who write but aren't quite what we'd think of as authors. Yeah, it's a muddy usage I know, I'm blanking on words.

Frosty The Lucky.

18 hours ago, Frosty said:

The image links you posted don't work for me John

Trying again:

18 hours ago, Frosty said:

The hammer itself is difficult to see at all but I can imagine a mechanism that COULD work driven by what I see.

Again, the foreshortening is a real problem, but I see all the elements of a classic water-powered triphammer. The undershot wheel (A) turns the shaft (B). The lug (C) pushes down the back end of the helve (D), raising up the hammer (E). Once the lug turns past where it can engage the helm, the hammer drops, striking the anvil. (NB: Both the anvil and the helve's pivot are unlabeled.) Here's a side view of a similar mechanism, in a scale model of a triphammer at Fontenay Abbey in France:

I did a little poking around, and discovered that the source of this image is one of the copperplate engravings in Georg Andreas Böckler's Theatrum Machinarum Novum, published in Nuremberg in 1673. Here's an excerpt from an AbeBooks listing for a first edition copy (just in case you've got an extra $18,500 sitting around with nothing else to spend it on):

Quote

 "It was in Germany that two of the most eminent engineering visionaries lived. The first of these was Georg Andreas Böckler who published a truly remarkable book called Theatrum Machinarum Novum, written and illustrated as a record of the progress of the art of engineering. "As one might gather, not just from the title page but from a knowledge of the general conditions pertaining in Germany after the Thirty Years' War, Böckler's acquaintance with machinery was restricted almost entirely to mills of one sort or another. In most of these, regardless of the motive power, he depicts the precursor of the geared transmission familiar to this day. "The seventeenth-century engineers had neither the theoretical knowledge nor the technical equipment to design and shape gear-wheels which would mesh with minimum friction. In fact, friction as such, although made use of in such applications as the sack-lift in a mill, was little understood. The construction of pinions to mesh with larger gear-wheels had yet to assume the form common today. However, the problem of shifting the direction of rotation of a drive through 90° was solved by the invention of the wallower driven either by a contrite wheel (a wooden wheel with tooth pegs protruding around the circumference parallel to the axis) or by a cogwheel having teeth projecting radially around the circumference at right-angles to the axis The wallower comprised two discs of wood, each drilled with a matching set of concentric holes near the perimeter. The discs, usually with square centre bores to aid fixing and to transmit rotary motion, were mounted on a shaft separate by a gap of as much as the mechanism dictated, and threaded through the holes, from one disc to the next, were wooden rods. The result looked not unlike a birdcage or lantern, hence its more common name. When it was meshed with a large wheel having suitably spaced wooden pegs around either its diameter (the contrite) or its periphery (the cog), depending on whether parallel or perpendicular motion was desired, a serviceable gear train was the result. Friction, though cut efficiency drastically. All this is depicted in Böckler's Theatre of New Machines"

 

  When I'm wrong I don't fool around..... 

Like I said, I can imagine the elements working but foreshortened or not the artist did a poor job of representing a functional machine. Simple things like no bearings under the wheel axle or a fulcrum for a trip hammer on the correct side of the main axle, etc.

The model is a perfectly workable trip hammer shop anyone with a little construction skill could turn into a full sized operation. 

My feeling is the pic under discussion is more of a "concept" drawing by someone without knowing enough to make it realistic. OR he would've adjusted for the perspective so it represented what he was trying to show. Heck, it could've been an ad for the competition trying to make the village smith look bad.

 Frosty The Lucky.

It looks like Böckler was an architect first and an engineer second, and I suspect that you're correct in considering this a concept drawing. The other illustrations I've found online from the Theatrum are generally of a piece with this one, showing various water-powered mills such as a gristmill or a fulling mill. A notable exception is the illustration of a hand-powered firefighting pump:

This looks like a scene he's at least familiar with though a person could wonder why there aren't wheels on the fire pump, the rest is there if kind of fanciful. I'm wondering if the large buckets on the horse drawn sledges are hauling water to the pump or the drivers aren't stopping to watch the fire. Judging by the two horse drawn sledges I suppose it's natural for the fire pump to be a sledge which explains the bottom. I have to say they're getting really good range from it.

 Frosty The Lucky.