December 29, 2014

Episode #12 – Maria Cristalli – “Is Blacksmithing a Gender Thing? ”

47 minutes

Maria Cristalli is an artist blacksmith working in the Cle Elum (east of Seattle), Washington area. She has been blacksmithing for over 20 years, spending her developing years as an apprentice smith working with master smiths and taking classes. She designs and forges architectural ironwork, home furnishings, ironwork for the garden, as well as sculpture.

What We Talked About:

She started working with metal in her late 20’s after taking a welding class. Then she met Louie Roffloer, http://www.blackdogforge.com/louiehome.html, of Black Dog Forge and was hired to help him expand his business.

While she was an assistant at Haystack with Peter Ross, he suggested that she apprentice under some blacksmiths. She was able to apprentice with Jacob Howard for 2.5 years and Darryl Nelson (http://darrylnelsonblacksmith.com/Sit_1./Home.html) for another 2.5 years.

A wrought iron box she made that was selected to be in the show called “Women Do Iron” at the National Ornamental Metals Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, http://www.metalmuseum.org/

Maria maintains her own WordPress website herself, http://mariacristalli.com/

How she had a 10 year old girl come to her shop for a year and half to learn blacksmithing, Maria tells us what the girl made

A panorama picture of her shop that is super cool and interactive, you can move your mouse around to move the picture you are looking at, it is done by Bradford Bohonus at http://www.bohonus.com/

Her new shop that she built from the ground up and how she planned it all out for the tools and power hammers she owns

The projects she is working on now are a driveway gate with a man door and a set of fireplace tools

Pricing – Maria gets an estimate of the materials, then figures out the labor hours and then adds 30% on top. She prefers designing at the forge rather than on paper first

Maria would like to start making and selling high end interior home accessories such as lamps, backsplashes

A project that was made by The Contemporary Blacksmiths Guild (http://www.contemporaryblacksmiths.org/about/ ), a large lantern designed fire pit. Eight blacksmiths working in her shop for 4 long days to complete the fire pit that was placed in a park in Roswell

Maria will be teaching a two week course at Penland School of Crafts (http://penland.org/iron/index.html ) this summer on how to make sculptural lamps, “ Forging a Sculptural Lamp”, July 5 - 17, 2015.

Maria Cristalli's Links:

Maria’s personal FB page – Click Here

Maria’s Website – Click Here

Maria’s video about her blacksmithing career on Vimeo: Click here

Panorama of Maria’s previous shop – Click here

If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would support the show by:

telling your friends.

sharing this episode using the social sharing buttons below.

subscribing to the show and leaving a rating and review in iTunes. Not sure how? Just follow these simple steps here or watch the short video tutorial

subscribing to the show in Stitcher.

Thanks so much for your support!

...more

View all episodes

By The BuRN Network - Metalworking podcasts

4.5

2828 ratings