Ironwork - Part II - Being a Continuation of the First Handbook, and Comprising from the Close of the Mediaeval Period to the End of the Eighteenth Century, Excluding English Work

By J. Starkie Gardner

This vintage book contains part II of a complete survey of the artistic working of iron in Great Britain from the earliest times until 1922. Profusely illustrated and full of fascinating historical information, this volume is highly recommended for modern readers with an interest in the history and development of artistic ironwork. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on metal work. Originally published in 1922.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Owen Press
• Release date: Feb 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781528783330

Book preview

IRONWORK.

PART II.

BEING A CONTINUATION OF THE FIRST HANDBOOK, AND COMPRISING FROM THE CLOSE OF THE MEDLEVAL PERIOD TO THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, EXCLUDING ENGLISH WORK.

BY

J. STARKIE GARDNER.

WITH ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS.

Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the

British Library

Metal Work

Metalworking is the process of working with metals to create individual parts, assemblies, or large-scale structures. The term covers a wide range of work from large ships and bridges to precise engine parts and delicate jewellery. It therefore includes a correspondingly wide range of skills, processes, and tools. The oldest archaeological evidence of copper mining and working was the discovery of a copper pendant in northern Iraq from 8,700 BC, and the oldest gold artefacts in the world come from the Bulgarian Varna Necropolis and date from 4450BC. As time progressed, metal objects became more common, and ever more complex. The need to further acquire and work metals grew in importance. Fates and economies of entire civilizations were greatly affected by the availability of metals and metalsmiths. The metalworker depends on the extraction of precious metals to make jewellery, buildings, electronics and industrial applications, such as shipping containers, rail, and air transport. Without metals, goods and services would cease to move around the globe with the speed and scale we know today.

One of the more common types of metal worker, is an iron worker – who erect (or even dismantle) the structural steel framework of pre-engineered metal buildings. This can even stretch to gigantic stadiums and arenas, hospitals, towers, wind turbines and bridges. Historically ironworkers mainly worked with wrought iron, but today they utilize many different materials including ferrous and non-ferrous metals, plastics, glass, concrete and composites. Ironworkers also unload, place and tie reinforcing steel bars (rebar) as well as install post-tensioning systems, both of which give strength to the concrete used in piers, footings, slabs, buildings and bridges. Such labourers are also likely to finish buildings by erecting curtain wall and window wall systems, precast concrete and stone, stairs and handrails, metal doors, sheeting and elevator fronts – performing any maintenance necessary.

During the early twentieth century, steel buildings really gained in popularity. Their use became more widespread during the Second World War and significantly expanded after the war when steel became more available. This construction method has been widely accepted, in part due to cost efficiency, yet also because of the vast range of application – expanded with improved materials and computer-aided design. The main advantages of steel over wood, are that steel is a ‘green’ product, structurally sound and manufactured to strict specifications and tolerances, and 100% recyclable. Steel also does not warp, buckle, twist or bend, and is therefore easy to modify and maintain, as well as offering design flexibility. Whilst these advantages are substantial, from aesthetic as well as financial points of view, there are some down-sides to steel construction. It conducts heat 310 times more efficiently than wood, and faulty aspects of the design process can lead to the corrosion of the iron and steel components – a costly problem.

Sheet metal, often used to cover buildings in such processes, is metal formed by an industrial process into thin, flat pieces. It is one of the fundamental forms used in metalworking and it can be cut and bent into a variety of shapes. Countless everyday objects are constructed with sheet metal, including bikes, lampshades, kitchen utensils, car and aeroplane bodies and all manner of industrial / architectural items. The thickness of sheet metal is commonly specified by a traditional, non-linear measure known as its gauge; the larger the gauge number, the thinner the metal. Commonly used steel sheet metal ranges from 30 gauge to about 8 gauge. There are many different metals that can be made into sheet metal, such as aluminium, brass, copper, steel, tin, nickel and titanium, with silver, gold and platinum retaining their importance for decorative uses. Historically, an important use of sheet metal was in plate armour worn by cavalry, and sheet metal continues to have many ornamental uses, including in horse tack. Sheet metal workers are also known as ‘tin bashers’ (or ‘tin knockers’), a name derived from the hammering of panel seams when installing tin roofs.

There are many different forming processes for this type of metal, including ‘bending’ (a manufacturing process that produces a V-shape, U-shape, or channel shape along a straight axis in ductile materials), ‘decambering’ (a process of removing camber, or horizontal bend, from strip shaped materials), ‘spinning’ (where a disc or tube of metal is rotated at high speed and formed into an axially symmetric part) and ‘hydroforming.’ This latter technique is one of the most commonly used industrial methods; a cost-effective method of shaping metals into lightweight, structurally stiff and strong pieces. One of the largest applications of hydroforming is in the automotive industry, which makes use of the complex shapes possible, to produce stronger, lighter, and more rigid body-work, especially with regards to the high-end sports car industry.

One of the most important, and widely incorporating roles in metalwork, comes with the welding of all this steel, iron and sheet metal together. ‘Welders’ have a range of options to accomplish such welds, including forge welding (where the metals are heated to an intense yellow or white colour) or more modern methods such as arc welding (which uses a welding power supply to create an electric arc between an electrode and the base material to melt the metals at the welding point). Any foreign material in the weld, such as the oxides or ‘scale’ that typically form in the fire, can weaken it and potentially cause it to fail. Thus the mating surfaces to be joined must be kept clean. To this end a welder will make sure the fire is a reducing fire: a fire where at the heart there is a great deal of heat and very little oxygen. The expert will also carefully shape the mating faces so that as they are brought together foreign material is squeezed out as the metal is joined. Without the proper precautions, welding and metalwork more generally can be a dangerous and unhealthy practice, and therefore only the most skilled practitioners are usually employed.

As is evident from this incredibly brief introduction, metalwork, and metalworkers more broadly, have been, and still are – integral to society as we know it. Most of our modern buildings are constructed using metal. The boats, aeroplanes, ships, trains and bikes that we travel on are constructed via metalwork, and mining, metal forming and welding have provided jobs for thousands of workers. It is a tough, often dangerous, but incredibly important field. We hope the reader enjoys this book.

German door-furniture in the South Kensington Museum.

PREFACE.

IN the days of infant civilizations with which the first volume of the handbook on Ironwork was mainly concerned, when might alone constituted right, the smith was a demigod, and the importance of ironworking was paramount. Esteemed for long ages as more than an equal among warriors, he only fell to the level of other craftsmen when war and the chase ceased to be the sole pursuits worthy of manhood. More than common skill in forging weapons of attack and defence might confer resistless power on the brave, while the failure of a weapon at a critical pass might induce a disaster which no courage could avert. The huntsman relied on the smith’s work, and with the advance of civilization the woodman and quarryman, the carpenter and mason, became dependent on him for tools. The Germanic races which peopled England held the smith especially in esteem, for however the Roman and Grecian hero might trust to his arms, the northern warrior made them his inseparable companions. The chieftain’s sword was, like his standard, well known to his comrades, and its fame was traditionally handed down to posterity; the custom of conferring a distinguishing name on the knight’s sword lasting as long as the age of romance and chivalry itself. The great value attaching to these weapons is shown by the will of Alfred the Great, who left a sword of the specified value of a hundred and twenty marks to one of his nobles. The veneration, in which ironwork was held, scarcely died out among Germanic races until the close of the mediæval period.

The great advance in civilization known as the Renaissance broke with many relics of barbarism, and with it the smith lost his exceptional position among craftsmen. But though divested of its antique glamour, and with its mighty engineering applications yet unthought of, that part of the subject still to be treated has not lost interest, and the prosperity of nations appears to become more and more bound up with that of the iron crafts. Thus with the decay of ironworking, Flanders, Spain, and Italy sank from their high positions, while Germany, France, and Switzerland continued to flourish. The proximate causes of a nation’s rise or decay are immeasurably complicated, but, as a rule, the active working of iron seems to be an indication of national strength. This aspect of the subject could not, of course, be entered upon in such a work as the present, but the influence of one nation’s ironworking upon that of another, through trade routes, rivalry, or neighbourly emulation, is briefly sketched.

Of all the countries of Europe, Italy exerted the most influence on art in Mediæval and Renaissance times, for, with the seat of the papal dignity at Rome, a constant stream of noble and learned visitors passed to and fro, with the result that every fashion and change in art introduced in Italy spread rapidly over Christendom. So little ironworking was practised, however, that, beyond the armourer’s craft, Italy exercised slight influence on smithing. Germany, on the other hand, shut in as in a ring-fence by the Alps, the Rhine, and the Baltic, and on the east by barbarism, developed the most accentuated art peculiarities; the frequent intercourse of its emperors with Italy affecting the gold and silver smiths’, the armourers’, and other courtly arts, but scarcely even tinging the folk’s smithcraft. The German ironworkers, as we have seen, drew their earliest inspirations from France, and from over the Belgian border; and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries native design was wholly discarded in favour of French. It is remarkable to find, at this time, that however magnificent the productions of German smiths might be, they had, in ceasing to be designers, ceased to attain individually to any celebrity, and this at a time when the fame of scores of French smiths, who were designers, was spread over half Europe. The German school of ironwork naturally influenced the bordering countries of Switzerland, Lorraine, Luxemburg, Denmark, and Poland: but, apart from the individual productions of German workmen, its influence cannot be traced in Italy, and we only recognize it to a limited degree in Spain. The Netherlands, the most busy mart of Europe in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, was a common meeting-ground for the arts of all countries, which were dispersed thence far and wide, to affect particularly the crafts of Germany, England, Spain, and even France.

It is to the French, however, that the palm in ironworking must be conceded, whether in point of delicacy of execution, refinement of design, or inventive genius. France has always been geographically in closer touch with the centres of ancient civilization than England, and under Charlemagne its relations with all that was cultured were most intimate. Yet in some arts, particularly metal-working, the Britons, Romano-Britons, and English were the superiors, just as for a time the still more remote Irish were superior to us. The subjugation of Southern Italy by the Normans made them familiar with the most sumptuous arts of Europe and the East, and introduced those arts into France prior to the Norman invasion of England, when our superiority declined. The crusades still further enriched their knowledge, and the superiority of French art over German and English, and even over Italian in architecture as well as in minor arts, became increasingly marked as ages rolled on. This was particularly the case after the Renaissance, and in nothing is this more apparent than in the ironwork which, with lavish and universal patronage, became of the most sumptuous character, and possessed of an extensive literature of its own.

Though every effort has been made to condense and abbreviate the subject so as to finish it within the compass of the present volume, it has unfortunately been found impracticable to include English ironwork, which thus remains to be treated in a third and concluding handbook.

Since the publication in 1892 of the first ironwork handbook, smithcraft has progressed uninterruptedly, not only in this country but in every other, and the large increase in the number of skilled and even artistic smiths is a most gratifying sign. For certainly no class is more important to the community at large than that of the skilled and independent craftsman, with scope to make his talent and individuality felt, and with freedom to aspire to that rank in the army of workers to which his qualities and industry may entitle him.

All that science and technical education can do to advance the smith is being taught, but no succinct account of the development, bearings, and possibilities of smithcraft, as an art, has been written. The mutual influences of different art-centres upon each other, and the inter-relations of the smithcraft of different countries, have not been traced; neither has any serious analysis of the characteristics which distinguish the ironwork of each country at different periods been hitherto attempted. The large amount of research required for such a work has doubtless deterred any competent writer