*** Ticket bookings go live on Wednesday 18th May at 7pm. Due to the popularity of the workshops we can only allow two Festival of Stuff workshop bookings per person across the week. ***

In this blacksmithing masterclass, you will be introduced to the core techniques used by blacksmiths to manipulate hot steel into decorative and useful forms. Under the skillfull guidance of blacksmiths Richard Pace and Lizzie Hughes, you will heat metal to about 1000 degrees in a coke forge to heat metal, then use hammers and anvils to make a simple object like a fire poker that incorporates many of the fundamental techniques used in the trade. You will go away with a small object you have made yourself and a good understanding of how to use different tools to shape hot metal.

Blacksmithing is known as the 'King of Trades', as all other trades came to the blacksmith for tools and equipment, whereas smiths were self-sufficient. Come and learn about what contemporary blacksmiths do; play with fire, hit things with hammers, and fettle some metal!

Lizzie Hughes and Richard Pace are the team behind The Urban Crafts Foundation a blacksmiths forge based in Essex. At UCF they are passionate about keeping heritage metalworking techniques alive and want to achieve this by making them relevant and understood by the public, consumers, and people working in the creative industries. To do this, they believe in passing on our specialist knowledge to people who will use it to develop innovative work that will reach and inspire a wide audience.

This masterclass is suitable for age 18+, aside from that, no experience or skill necessary, all welcome!

This workshop is part of the Festival of Stuff.

Images courtesy of Lizzie Hughes.