The last Month at IAStudios
Hello everyone!
I would like to start by apologising for the tardiness of this blog, I (Joe) have predominantly been on holiday recently around my little girl’s 10th birthday and a series of weddings (it seems to be the season), and as the only member of the team who can (semi) reliably spell, that means the blog has been left by the wayside for a few weeks. However, I am now back and regular blog posts should resume.
Time to fill you in on what has been going on in the past couple of weeks:
Dan has finished the gate that was pictured in the previous blog and it has been galvanised ready for installation in the next couple of weeks. He has also made some window frames and accessories as well as continuing with our standing orders of tongs.
The gate, back from the galvanisers
A freshly made window. Primed and drying
Elliott has been a busy boy. We have had a good number of Knife and Damascus knife courses over the last couple of weekends with Elliott taking the lead on teaching them. During the week itself Elliott has been working on a new batch of axes for our showroom (which will also be available for purchase on our online stall) repairing and upgrading our primary belt sander into what can only be described as “An extremely effective safety hazard”, and reorganising our entire store room to create new usable space within the building. Elliott has also been working on a batch of ball pein hammers and finished a commission for some external railings, the man has been a real trooper this month.
One of our customers twisting a bar of Damascus to create the pattern.
External Railings, ready for their coat.
Hammer heads, fresh out the forge.
Joe, whilst away for much of this time, did manage to sync our new booking system calendar with our calendar on Craftcourses so that our new schedule integrates properly, host another market stall at Ludlow, advertise our classes at the Medieval fair in Hereford and work on some new pendants and bracelets that should hopefully appear on our market stall sometime soon! There was also a commission for some fixings for items being displayed in a gallery that Joe has almost completed as well.
Gallery fixings, ready for cleaning and painting. I hope to get pictures of these in situ once they are up.
Our stall at Ludlow market
Some little pendants to be
This month we also welcome Simon to the team. He is an experienced blacksmith hailing from Germany and he has joined both our experience day teaching team and our commission group. Simon makes lovely items for our market stall, the most iconic so far being his little Gonks. These can be seen around our showroom and are a popular item on our market stalls. I hope that they will also feature on our website soon. Simon taught a class of 4 knives this month and did a superb job.
Simon’s Gonks
The first 4 knives taught by Simon at IAStudios
Welcome Simon!
You may have noticed a bit of an increase in social media presence recently, that is thanks to the hard work of Martha, who also happens to be our photographer for most of our professional pictures - you can usually tell if Martha took one of the photos, they are vastly superior in quality to the ones we apes tend to take on our phones. Martha should be in the workshop taking more photos in the future and playing more of a part in our social media too. Go Martha!
Welcome Martha!
On a side note - finally the heat has broken and the rain has returned. Whilst most may miss the sunshine and hot weather, we couldn’t be happier! Quality of life in the forge has increased dramatically now that we no longer feel like we have been shut inside an industrial oven on gas mark 100.
Cheers for bearing with us in this sizzling summer, now lets have an awesome autumn.
~ The (expanding) IAStudios team