CAF AM photo: Steve Oliver
Left:
Initial buckles on belts,
2010; fabricated steel,
hand-dyed leather
2.25 x 3 in.
Below:
Star collection on belts,
2010; forged and fabricated
recycled bike cogs, steel,
copper, hand-dyed leather
3.25 in. diameter
Product Placement
Buckle Up
E R IC A G O RD O N OF S T E E L TO E
Studios didn’t plan to be a black-
smith. An artist, yes: Her father
is a full-time woodworker who
makes spoons, her sister does
ceramics, her mother is an avid
supporter of the arts. Gordon’s
been hustling at American Craft
Council shows since she was 8
years old. But it was Penland
School of Crafts that turned her
into a blacksmith, she says.
After earning her BFA from
the University of New Mexico,
Gordon received a two-week
work-study scholarship to the
North Carolina craft mecca in
1997. She listed jewelry as her
first choice for a class; black-
smithing was second - and
what she got.
It was love at first forge. She
spent the next six years appren-
ticing, learning all she could and
picking up work along the way,
primarily architectural iron-
work. When one of the people
she was working for went on a
trip, Gordon had a month alone
in the studio. She made her first
belt buckle. “It was one of those
‘out of desperation came a huge
amount of creativity’ acts,” she
says. Six weeks later, she had
her first wholesale order.
As a one-woman Seattle-
based shop (with occasional
assistant help), Gordon now
produces a variety of handmade
buckles out of forged steel and
cast pewter. She also makes lus-
trous dyed leather belts and has
experimented with steel house-
wares. Her designs are urban but
refined, hard-edged but whimsi-
cal. Blacksmiths are renegades,
she says, accustomed to mixing
it up; working in a field where
you can make your tools and
improvise your methods is what
keeps her job interesting.
Her latest line is a series of
“initial buckles,” blocky modern
monograms with bold single
letters set against patterned
backgrounds. The font is Earnes
Century Modern from House
Industries. The inspiration, she
says, came from the shows she
does out West, home of the per-
sonalized (and often oversized)
belt buckle. Cowboys would
check out her earlier stuff, but it
wasn’t quite their style. So she
decided to design a line in honor
of their storied aesthetic.
It won’t be her first case of
crossover appeal. In addition to
participating in ACC and other
high-end juried shows (including
Origin in London), Gordon does
indie craft events such as Seat-
tle’s Urban Craft Uprising and
the Renegade Craft fairs in New
York, Los Angeles, and San
Francisco. Then there are the
shows with designboom.com in
New York and Copenhagen. She
does between eight and 15 shows
every year, and her buckles tend
to sell well across the board.
It may seem paradoxical, but
sticking to commercial produc-
tion - rather than pursuing, say,
architectural commissions - has
given her a lot of artistic freedom,
Gordon says. “It’s your design;
you just put it out there,” she
says. “If people like it, they buy
it.” The freedom has allowed her
to hew closely to her shop’s mis-
sion: using recycled and re-
claimed materials and sustainable
processes to create quality hand-
made products.
This past summer, Gordon
returned again to Penland - this
time as a teacher. During her
week-long class “Forage and
Forge,” she took her students
to a junkyard to collect random
metal items. They returned to
the classroom and figured out
how to work with them. “It
turned into a little bit of a free-
for-all, but I wasn’t teaching
traditional, step-by-step black-
smithing,” she says. “I wanted
to show people how loose the
boundaries can be, working
with Steel.”
-JULIE K . HANUS
steeltoestudios.com
Julie K. Hanus is senior editor
o/American Craft
Shows to See
Gallery shows, listed A -Z by
state. View complete calendar:
americancraftmag.org
AR / Little Rock
Arkansas Art Center
3jth Toys Designed by Artists
to Feb. 20
arkarts.com
In its first year as a biennial, this
formerly annual show includes
40 playful works by 35 artists
working in a variety of materials.
AZ /Mesa
Mesa Arts Center
32nd Annual Contemporary Crafts
to Mar. 6
mesaartscenter.com
This juried exhibition show-
cases national artists using
traditional craft forms to create
innovative, quality work.
CA / Los Angeles
Craft and Folk Art Museum
A Marriage o f Craft and Design:
The Work o f Evelyn and
Jerome Ackerman
to May 8
cafam.org
The couple’s diverse body of
work is on display, illuminating
their mastery of modern design
and knowledge of traditional
craft and folk art (below).
CT / New Haven
Yale University Art Gallery
Embodied: Black Identities
In American Art
Feb. 18 - June 26
artgallery.yale.edu
A curatorial collaboration
between students from Yale
University and the University
of Maryland, College Park,
presenting work in a variety
of media.
fcb/m arn american craft 013
