USINGA VELVET HAMMER: WOMANMAKES LIVING AS BLACKSMITH

Roberta Elliott worked with her "apprentice," a pneumatic power hammer, to shape a hot steel rod.

Elliott created a decorative bracket for a calling bell in her shop for a customer.

Elliott's blacksmith shop is situated near quiet woods.

A locking wrench was modified by Elliott to hold steel pipe.

COBDEN, Ill. -- Smell the distinctive odor of coal burning in the forge. Hear the rhythmic pounding of metal. Enter the world of Roberta Elliott, blacksmith.

Her dimly lit workshop in rural Cobden is filled with tools, anvils, welders and bars of steel. The fire burns.

When Elliott arrived in Southern Illinois, her vocation seemed destined for a different path. She came to Carbondale to study medicine. While studying biology and physiology, Elliott discovered something different at the university, the art department. Among art programs offered is one in metalsmithing. She began to dabble.

"The first time I picked up a hammer, I knew this was for me," she said. "It's so exhilarating."

The same week she handed in her doctoral dissertation, Elliott enrolled in farrier's school. She became a horseshoer. But even as she learned to bend the steel into shape for horseshoes, she experimented with other shapes and designs.

After finishing the training, Elliott shoed horses for a living, but continued developing her blacksmithing art.

Within a few years, with the encouragement of friends who were willing to buy her art, Elliott gave up horseshoeing to pursue blacksmithing full time.

"I say I have an organic style and also a feminine style," Elliott said. "Steel is very androgynous. It is obviously very strong, but it also has subtlety and fluidity."

Elliott says she's not a sculptor. Her pieces have a practical function. She makes candelabras and towel bars and "calling bells."

Elliott calls herself a production blacksmith. She crafts enough items to make a living. Her pieces are sold wholesale to galleries across the nation. She also attends shows in the Midwest where she sells retail. And she does commission work.

Classical music plays in the background, often covered by the sounds of the shop.

"Do you know why it's dark in a blacksmith's shop?" she asked, as a steel rod heated in the fire.

"It's dark so I can see the color of the steel. At different temperatures, the steel turns a different color."

With a 2 1/2 pound hammer, Elliot pounded the rod to a point, then stuffed it back into the coals.

She drew out the glowing rod and placed it under a pneumatic power hammer to flatten the end.

"This is my apprentice who is always on time," she joked about the power tool, which saves time and muscle.

Elliott flattened the tip to look something like an arrow head, but more delicate. Back into the fire.

With a different attachment, she hammered the flattened area into the shape of a leaf.

"I can also sense the temperature of the metal by the way it feels in my hand," Elliott said. "It vibrates more as it hardness until it will actually sting my hand."

After heating the leaf once more, Elliot uses a vice and a small hammer to give the steel branch a subtle vein and gently flared leaves.

While the tools look rugged and dirty, Elliott explained that they must be smooth. The metal, she said, will pick up any imperfections and be marred with unwanted dents and dimples.

She wears special glasses to protect her eyes from sparks and tiny flakes of metal. She wears ear plugs, a dust mask and steel-toed boots.

Her hands are stained from the metal and fire and coal.

"It's hard on your body," Elliott said. "I have to learn to pace myself. But I always sleep well at night."

She scraped the oxide off with a wire brush and lay the leaf on a table for a closer inspection.

"My work is inspired by nature," she said. The rustic Southern Illinois landscape comes right up to the door of her shop. "It's organic and flowing. People say they can tell my pieces were made by a woman."