Exhibition celebrates life of influential blacksmith

Alan Evans mentored many young blacksmiths over the course of his life

The life of an influential artist blacksmith is being celebrated with the opening of an exhibition and accompanying book.

At just 29 years old, Alan Evans was commissioned to create the gates for the treasury of St Paul's Cathedral in London.

Mr Evan's former partner, Lesley Green, said: "It was a very big commission for a very young artist and that really helped create what was called the New Iron Age at that time."

The exhibition - Earth, Fire and Iron - will be held at Stroud's Museum in the Park to commemorate the artist and his life growing up in a colony of people near Stroud, who live life according to the words of the 19th century Russian author, Leo Tolstoy.

The exhibition's curator, Mary Greensted, said he had been at the forefront of a generation of young artist blacksmiths who pioneered contemporary British blacksmithing.

"He [Mr Evans] was part of a real movement in the craft that rejected the very traditional approaches to the craft," she said.

"Lots of blacksmiths were looking for ways to bring their work more up to date."

Mr Evans passed away in 2023 aged 70, and the exhibition and book is designed to celebrate his work and share the ideas he had with others.

He had a particular interest in mentoring young people and Ms Green hopes the exhibition will help encourage more people to take up blacksmithery.

"It's much more difficult nowadays to become a blacksmith - the education system seems to have really removed a lot of opportunities for young people to do pottery or art or music," she said.

"It seems to be much more streamlined and constrained and so those opportunities are the kind of things we're looking at as part of the legacy that Alan had."

The exhibition features opportunities for young people to try their hand at forging through workshops, she added.

"Blacksmithing is all around us - its tools, its latches, its gates and nails - it's a humble and modest craft and yet its extraordinarily beautiful," said Ms Green.

Earth, Fire and Iron will run from 6 September until 2 November.