Jay Silber
My father was a dentist in New Jersey, until he moved his practice and his family to Upstate New York, in the Western Catskills. We all began to develop new skills. My mother learned to spin wool shorn from our sheep, and to weave. We raised our own meat and grew our own vegetables. My brother learned to work with wood, and I began my journey in blacksmithing in 1972, when I was 15. An old-time blacksmith had passed away and his daughter wanted to clean out his garage. I bought the entire shop and moved it to our garage, where I made a quick hole in the roof and installed a smoke stack.
As we lived in a dairy region, I got my coal from the local creamery. I scrounged scrap metal wherever I could find it. There was an abundance of old silo hoops which turned out to be real wrought iron. I gathered tools and learned new methods over the years. I spent many days at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, NY, (better known for its baseball museum), learning techniques from Jim Porteus and Harvey Brotman. Since the early 70s, blacksmithing has seen quite a revival in this country. There are some very talented artists doing beautiful work.
After receiving a Master’s Degree in Geophysics from Michigan State, I moved to Texas in 1982 for a job in the oil business. Thrilled to discover barbecue and chicken fried steak, I took an immediate liking to Texas. I'm one of those "got here as quick as I could" folks. I currently live in Richardson. In addition to my day job, I set up a blacksmithing shop in Farmersville in the mid 1990s. I have all the basics of an old-time blacksmith shop (coal forge, anvil, hammers, and tongs), though I’ve added a few modern amenities. However, I still don’t have air conditioning, so July and August are tough months to blacksmith in Texas!
Growing up on the farm, we learned to solve problems with what we had on hand, and that carries over into my work today. I like to find creative and beautiful solutions to every day needs. I also enjoy making art, particularly collaborating with other artists. But my greatest satisfaction comes from engineering something useful, well-made, and totally unique. Every object is hand-crafted and one-of-a-kind and sometimes, even contains a little bit of history, like the bottle openers and pigtails made of old railroad spikes from a WWII army base in East Texas. Blacksmiths were among the earliest recyclers! My goal is to create beauty and utility.