Blacksmith in 500: Guilds and the village forge

The route in has barely changed since the Iron Age: stand next to someone who knows, and hit a great deal of hot metal. No licence is needed in most countries, though Germany runs a regulated apprenticeship and master exam, Japan licenses its swordsmiths through a five-year live-in apprenticeship, and Britain regulates the neighbouring trade of farriery by law. What changed is the market: the Industrial Revolution took the production work — nails, chain, horseshoes, hardware — and left the smith the custom, artistic and restoration work machines still cannot do.

This page follows the trade from Hittite Anatolia through wootz steel, Ulfberht swords and Masamune's Kamakura forge to the village smithy's collapse after 1908 and the artist-blacksmith revival that began in the 1970s. It covers how people actually learn the craft today across four continents, what a forging day does to the body, the know-how smiths pass down at the anvil, who reached the top of the trade across seven centuries, and how much of the work automation already took — and what it left behind.

Do blacksmiths still exist, and what do they make? Yes — but almost none of them shoe horses or make nails. Modern blacksmiths forge architectural work such as gates, railings, balustrades and staircases, one-off sculpture, custom knives and tools, film and theatre props, and like-for-like restorations of historic ironwork. Industry forges its parts by machine; the hand trade survives at the custom, artistic and heritage end of the market.