I’m Rosalie Brown, a teenage blacksmith living in Burlington, Vermont.
How I Got Started
I first fell in love with blacksmithing at the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, NY, near where my grandparents live. I walked into the shop and there was resident blacksmith Eric Schatzel, hammering away. I was eight years old. And madly in love at first sight. (I thought blacksmithing was rather wonderful too.) I stood watching for hours.
That’s me and Eric posing for the camera—big hammers, big arms.
Soon, my parents had purchased a copy of Backyard Blacksmith, an amazing book by Lorelei Sims. I read it before bed. I planned out a home forge for our garage. (That hasn’t happened…yet.)
In summer of 2015, I was 10, and enrolled in a camp called “Heavy Metal Mania” at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. No, we weren’t learning Metallica licks. Instead, we were learning about metalwork. We made tin boxes. We poured bronze. I made a copper box with my initials on it. We visited ore mines in New York State. It was great but I wanted to work with hot metal. 2000 degree forges to be precise. However, the risk management people didn’t think that was really such a good idea.
Then, on the way to school, in 5th grade, I would cut behind the baseball field and local bagel shop. To my amazement, I learned that behind out back, in a garage, there was the nearly hidden shop of Orchard Steel, the blacksmithing home of world-class knife-maker Moriah Cowles. She showed me her forge, her woodworking shop (for making knife handles), and encouraged me that the there was a way forward for a female smith (even one still in elementary school!).
At 14, I took my first true blacksmithing class at the Maritime Museum. Mike Imrie was the instructor. It was me, an 8th grade girl—and a bunch of middle-aged men. It was great. We played Star Wars—light sabers with red hot metal rods. I made a hook and a barbecue fork. Mostly I learned my way around the museum’s coal forge and some basics of hammering and smithing. I came home every day covered in coal grit. My snot stayed black for a week.
What Came Next
Soon after the pandemic began, I reached out again to Moriah to see if she would take me on as a 16-year-old intern. She was busy having babies and so couldn’t teach me, but she gave me a list of other blacksmiths and metal artist in the area and encouraged me to reach out to them. I started emailing down the list. The only response I got was from Kat Cleary, an artist from Burlington, who wasn’t doing metalwork at that time, but said I should contact Mike Harrigan. “He’s the best blacksmith I know,” Kat said.
I wrote to Mike, wondering if I could check out his shop—and wondering if he had advice for how I could become a blacksmith’s apprentice. He wrote back with two words: “call me.” I did.
It turns out that Kat was right. He’s the best blacksmith in the whole world. OK, maybe I’m biased. But he’s been an amazing teacher. You can read more about him here.
On that first day out, in the summer of 2020, Mike taught me how to make a coat hook—a good coat hook. I had made hooks before, but he showed me how to keep the curve consistent—and taught me a million other things about being a blacksmith. I’ve worked as his apprentice and student from that day forward, going out to his fabulous, ramshackled, old shack-turned-blacksmith-palace in Charlotte, Vt, a few days most weeks.
At the end of that summer, I wanted to keep going, working with Mike. However there was this obstacle called Going To School. Happily, my schedule, for two days per week, was messed up—and left me with three contiguous class blocks—all empty. Hallelujah. I rushed straight to the amazing BHS guidance counselor, Ms. Karen Prouty, nearly jumping up and down: “Can I blacksmith as an independent study course?” “Yes”, she said. Ms. Prouty has been a fabulous advocate and guide in making this dream for me come true. She soon helped me connect with Ms. Colby Skoglund, the Design Tech. teacher, who, happily, took on supervising my blacksmith work an internship for credit. I’ve been heading out to Mike’s shop 2x/week all this academic year—before rushing back to AP Statistics covered in soot.
Somedays, Mike helps me on my own projects—a sword (for my friend), a kitchen knife for my parents (for xmas), a tie clip. Other days, we work on Mike’s projects: large, abstract sculptures that need welding or finishing. Usually, they are so big that it takes 2 or 3 people to hold them up to the power hammer. And on other days, Mike gives me assignments for practice—like: “make as many hooks as you can, as similar to each other as possible.” His look like identical twins. Mine, like fraternal twins…well more like cousins, but at least I’m getting them in the same family!
Now, I can weld. I can run a power hammer. I can cut metal with an oxygen-acetylene torch. I can run a gas forge, as well as coal forge. I can roll big metal sculptures. I can scroll. I can make a metal leaf. I know when to douse hot metal. And when not to. I’ve learned the ripe colors that metal takes on at different temperatures. I can pee in the woods. (JK, I could do that before.) I’ve learned the insane number of steps it takes just to make a piece of metal lie flat. I’m just beginning to learn the hundreds of skills that a master blacksmith knows. But I’m on my way.