Meet Adrian Smith – Blacksmith

Local man, Adrian Smith has had a long career working with tools. Ha, maybe those kinds of people too, but no, crafting tools!

It’s satisfying that his family name is most apposite for the job he now has as Blacksmith – and he has been a Smith of both metal, cold and ‘black’, and wood. He’s spent the best part of 40 years crafting, grafting, and selecting; Adrian’s career has mostly been in the world of antique furniture, restoration, valuation and curation, he’s seen it all from the rise to the fall and his story of working with tools started when he was a small boy.

At a young age, Adrian was introduced to his grandfather’s workshop on the farm in the Nantwich area. His grandfather’s workshop was a place, not of reverence in a way that some people’s grandfather’s workshops are spoken of, with outlines of tools on peg boards and regimented labelled storage pristine and orderly, no, Adrian’s grandpa’s working place was a place of work; in constant motion with dark corners and mystery, boxes of unlabelled treasures, danger and spoken warnings of “DO NOT TOUCH!”.

Adrian explains he learned the safety of working with tools from his grandfather right from the get-go, who’s father himself had been a blacksmith in the 1st World War, working alongside the gun carriages to keep them moving.