20 
House & Garden 
SMITHCRAFT AS AN ALLY TO ARCHITECTURE 
Styles of Wrought and Cast Iron which Enliven a Facade—The Old Patterns 
and the Modern Reproductions 
HAROLD DONALDSON EBERLEIN • 
D OMESTIC archi¬ 
tecture in America 
has been advancing by 
leaps and bounds in the 
past twenty or twenty- 
five years. The more 
considerable part of the 
improvement, both in ar¬ 
chitecture and architec¬ 
tural taste at large, has 
taken place in the very 
recent past. We are hap¬ 
pily coming into our own 
again after sloughing off 
the worst of the transi¬ 
tional stupidities that 
came between the deadly 
sterility of the long, 
dreary Victorian era and 
the present state of archi¬ 
tectural grace. 
But we shall never 
fully enjoy the benefits 
of our architectural herit- 
.age—whether of Ameri¬ 
can, British or foreign 
derivation—until we cul¬ 
tivate a broader general 
appreciation of architectural refinements and 
subtleties than is usually ours. 
In no one and easily compassed way is there 
a more promising opportunity of attaining this 
distinction, this subtle refinement in our build¬ 
ings, than by using metal work for exterior 
enrichment and, of all metals, iron is the most 
universally suitable for this purpose. It is a 
very efficacious and readily applied trimming 
and quickly does away with architectural arid¬ 
ity. We have, it is true, made a good begin¬ 
ning in our return to intelligent employment of 
exterior ironwork, but it is only a beginning, 
and a comparison between the past, when deco¬ 
rative smithing was in its hey-day, and the 
present, when it is just winning its way back 
again to favor, will show how much there is 
to do and how wide are the possibilities which 
lie before us. 
The American Tradition 
Our own American past was by no means 
barren of worthy decorative smithing. Most of 
us, unfortunately, are so accustomed to taking 
the old ironwork we see about us as a matter of 
course that comparatively few stop to contem¬ 
plate its niceties of craftsmanship, unless some¬ 
thing occurs to draw our attention especially to 
them in individual instances. The Colonial 
blacksmith, therefore, generally suffers a lack 
of appreciation at our hands. 
The early American tradition, sad to say, 
lapsed into utter insignificance before the mid¬ 
dle of the 19th Century and was succeeded by 
the practice of revolting cast-iron banality. A 
certain amount of exterior ironwork, neverthe¬ 
less, in the shape of gratings for cellar windows 
and handrails for steps seems always to have 
been deemed a necessity, even in the most de¬ 
based period. Judging from some of the forms 
in which it was cast for these purposes, one is 
inclined to regard it as a necessary evil. 
But from this dismal epoch we may now 
turn, with no little satis¬ 
faction, to the work pro¬ 
duced in recent years by 
craftsmen who have a 
wholesome respect for 
their craft and a sincere 
belief in it. They have 
a genuine feeling for 
their material and a sense 
of propriety in design in¬ 
dicating what is seemly 
to be wrought in iron and 
what not. They have 
added again the trans¬ 
forming grace of crafts¬ 
manship to a metal that 
was long despised as base 
and held undeserving of 
decorative effort. There 
was the necessity for ex¬ 
terior ironwork and the 
craftsman made a virtue 
of necessity and bestowed 
such admirably cunning 
craftsmanship upon his 
medium that he enlarged 
the scope of his craft, did 
much to restore it to its 
Early igth Century ancient dignity, and 
cast iron balcony, opened the eyes of the 
with lion and griffin people to the number of 
moti f s forms, forms they appar¬ 
ently had not dreamed of 
before, in which wrought-iron, or wrought-iron 
in combination with cast-iron, may be employed 
to utilitarian and decorative advantage at one 
and the same time. 
The Properties of Jron 
The cheapness of the raw material and the 
ductility and strength of wrought-iron give it 
superiority over other metals for most exterior 
work. It needs but the addition of becoming 
design and deft craftsmanship, along with judi- 
-r - 
ms*. 
Simple doors and an 
ornate top characterize 
th ; s wrought iron gate¬ 
way to a French cha¬ 
teau, dignifying the en¬ 
trance 
Rear facade of a stucco 
house in California en¬ 
livened with simple 
wrought iron rails and 
grills. Myron T. Hunt, 
architect 
