Growing up in a pretentious and overwrought suburb with an overdeveloped sense of aesthetics, I had assumed that wrought iron design reached its peak hundreds of years ago. All the wrought iron designs that I saw around me were tired and boring and pretentious. There were ornamental wrought iron fences, all of them designed to say ?keep out? and ?I know you want to come in? at the same time. There were new McMansions with wrought iron balusters absurdly out of place on the bloated plaster exteriors. I had always wanted to learn how to forge iron, but it seemed like there was no use. It only served to remind you how ugly and boring modern architecture is.
I am so glad that I took that metal smithing class in college! If I hadn’t, I never would have realized the possibility of wrought iron design. I had always sort of liked the wrought iron benches I saw in the park. Without the background of oversized houses and pretentious water fountains, they looked sort of nice and seemed to harmonize with the background. What I didn’t realize was that wrought iron designs can harmonize with many different settings if they are done right. It is just a matter of mastering the old styles and understanding the new.
You see, wrought iron design is like anything else. It has a certain look, and it has certain strengths and certain weaknesses. One of the great strengths of wrought iron design is its ability to be striking without being flashy. Wrought iron furniture, for example, can either be used to make an impression, or to fade into the background. It is all a matter of context.
The reason that so many wrought iron designs look so tacky nowadays, in fact, is because they are made by hand by craftsmen and then selected by hand by people who have no taste. A good wrought iron designer can come up with the perfect trellis for any garden, one that will harmonize beautifully with the vines as they spiral up the sides of it. Similarly, a wrought iron canopy bed that has a basically modern design with touches of ornamental flourishes around the corners can be absolutely breathtaking. The problem is that, with any of the old crafts, people always tend to overdo it. No one understands subtlety in America, and it is doubtful whether anyone ever did.
