On his farm just outside of Moose Jaw, Don Fox stepped through time as he walked into the small red shed just a short walk from his house. Inside, time and technology haven’t changed for hundreds of years.
In the middle of the shed is Fox’s anvil, forged before 1850. Just to the right is his hand cranked forge that still uses coal to fuel the fire.
Fox is a blacksmith. He calls his work “a hobby that pays for itself”.
The equipment that lines the walls of the makeshift shop come from farm auction sales across the province. Fox’s techniques are the same used by blacksmiths for hundreds of years.
“They figured out how to do things and they did it right and they passed them down and passed down through time. I’m still using the same processes they used to create ironwork,” Fox said.
According to Fox, that passing of knowledge was mostly done from person to person, never to text. And because techniques weren’t usually recorded, the trade started to suffer in the 1970’s when the remaining working blacksmiths started to die off. That’s when a movement started to record the trade.
And now people like Fox are keeping the tradition alive. He volunteers at museums and festivals across Saskatchewan to show off his skills and pass on the trade.
For Hossein Gahniabadi, persevering the old fashioned way is also his life’s work. Instead of willing iron to bend to his will, Gahniabadi is breaking glass and making the pieces into beautiful works of art.
Stained glass windows date back hundreds of years, but according to Gahniabadi, time and technology has hardly impacted the craft.
In his downtown Regina studio, the walls are lined with glass from around the world. Gahniabadi pointed to one piece with big brush strokes of red, blue, and yellow, and explained this particular sheet comes from a factory in France that’s been producing glass for 600 years.
Besides commission work and teaching, the artist also does repair work. Working on windows that have stood in churches and buildings in the province for decades gives him a window to the past.
“When you touch the edges of that glass, you know the last time that part of glass which is hidden inside that lead was touched was 100 years ago, and you wonder, who was the guy who put this here?” he said.
Like Fox and his blacksmithing, Gahniabadi is passing on his traditional knowledge. He teaches classes at his studio, and said that like him, students get addicted to the work.
By passing on their skills and traditional knowledge, both mem are ensuring the old fashioned way endures into the future.
