Welcome, come on in, grab your favorite beverage of choice and hunker down in a comfy seat because today I have a bit of a different interview for you…..yes it may be a little deep regarding artistic approaches and creativity with forging.  I have invited Daniel Miller from Waynesville North Carolina to read an article he wrote and published in the Anvils Ring back in 2002.  When I first read, the article titled “The Least of These” I was emotionally moved and connected to it on so many levels and I just had to talk to Daniel about reading it for us and to further discuss his approach to forging. I hope you enjoy it, I plan to have him read some more of his articles about a few of his forging projects. A re-write, done in September of 2016, of the article Daniel Miller wrote for the Spring 2002 edition of the “Anvil’s Ring”. “The Least of These” : One smith’s wonderings and wanderings about why and for whom he keeps doing this work. By Daniel Miller  “We have taken a great social movement and turned it into a tiresome little aristocracy working with high skill for the very rich.”   When I came across this rather despairing and depressing remark in the lead essay for a catalog which accompanied a recent show at the American Craft Museum, it jumped off the page at me, for it so clearly stated a problem that has gnawed at my conscience for many years.  The author of this remark was C. R. Ashbee, one of the founders of the Arts and Crafts movement in England, which thrived between the 1880’s and around 1915.  He was commenting on the devolution of that movement, which had originally been envisioned as a means to ennoble, empower, and enrich the lives of common people by bringing simple, but beautifully designed and made craft objects within their reach. Many of us run into the sad paradox that the better our work becomes, the less accessible it becomes to anyone whose financial means remotely resembles our own.  My sense of discomfort with this paradox, and an accompanying sense of guilt, or at least complicity, grew as I watched what seemed like a commendable desire on my part—to have each piece I make be better, more complex, perhaps even more consequential than the last—placing my work beyond the reach of anyone but “the very rich”.  At one point, when my father asked me about a rather extensive (for me) architectural project I was doing, I replied, “the assignment is ‘make us something that makes us look much richer than we looked last year.’”  My father chided me for being cynical.  I responded that I was just being accurate, but in hindsight, I realize that he was right.  My discomfort or guilt had started to express itself as cynicism—that sure sign of emotional retreat and surrender. My first response (a knee-jerk one) to my realization about where this kind of work was taking me was a decision to redirect my efforts—no more bidding on large ostentatious architectural jobs.  Instead of decorating gigantic architectural wedding cakes with flourishes of wrought iron icing, I would try to make small nourishing whole grain wrought iron buns and muffins.  I would excavate my soul and try to bring forth some nourishment.   This change did seem to be a positive step.  I was finally making work that meant much more to me—some of which seemed to expose my interior to me with more clarity that I would ever have expected to be possible.  But I soon discovered that it still didn’t address the basic problem.  The sheer work, combined with the new effort of exploration, innovation, and blind wandering that these pieces required of me made my “wrought iron icing projects” seem downright efficient.  Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the bottom line was that the work of my new direction was no more accessible to people of average, or less than average means than my earlier work had been.  The problem seemed insoluble.   What had once been a simple penchant for trying to stretch the envelope of my work had become an addiction.  If