Blacksmith hammers out art's preservation

By: PAUL EAKINS - Staff Writer | Saturday, March 3, 2007 2:40 AM PST ∞

ESCONDIDO -- In a green, aluminum-sided building at the Escondido History Center in Grape Day Park, the sounds of the past ring out with each

clang of blacksmith Stefan Kertz's hammer.

As he worked in the Bandy Blacksmith Shop on Thursday afternoon, Kertz used a chisel and hammer to score the metal "leaves" of a

plant-inspired bowl holder. Then, heating each leaf with a blowtorch, he bent them outward with pliers wielded by the strong hands of someone

who has spent his entire life working with stone and metal.

"It makes me feel good when you do something with your hands. ... It keeps me alive," Kertz, 70, said with a slight German accent.

Last month, Kertz received an award from the Escondido City Council for supporting historical preservation through smithing.

The Escondido resident is a longtime member of the history center board and is credited with creating a growing local blacksmiths guild.

"He's been instrumental in starting up the Bandy Blacksmith Guild," said Wendy Barker, executive director of the history center.

The guild, that like the blacksmith shop was named after one of Escondido first blacksmiths, Tom Bandy, has grown to 44 members since its

formation five years ago.

Since 1993, Kertz has volunteered at the blacksmith shop almost every Thursday and Friday afternoon, demonstrating an industry and art that

have mostly disappeared. Other guild members run the shop the rest of the week, keeping it open Tuesday through Saturday.

Most recently, Kertz pushed for the creation of an almost complete wheelwright shop next door to the blacksmith shop to take advantage of the

skills of local blacksmith Phil Ewing. Ewing teaches classes at the shop and is one of the few remaining wheelwrights around.

Kertz looks like he came right off the page of a history book, part of a pastoral past.

He wears a brown leather apron that is dirtied and stained from years of work. A faded blue-gray cap covers unruly white hair that still has a

few blond traces.

That hair extends down the sides of his weathered face into two bushy white sideburns. Below Kertz's thick, white eyebrows, his gray-green

eyes shined Thursday as he talked about smithing.

"Blacksmiths never throw away anything," he said as he showed off some of the many tools and art pieces he has created through the years,

often out of scrap metal and junk.

His creations included stone masonry tools, letter openers made out of horseshoes or railroad spikes, an ornamental cross, a tomahawk made

from a car part, and a candelabra formed from bent and twisted metal files. Most of the equipment used in the blacksmith shop is the same as

those used decades ago, before modern technology changed the craft.

Kertz said that while blacksmithing became mostly obsolete with the advent of factories and modern technology, "they can never make it as

beautiful as the handmade stuff."

For most of history, blacksmiths carried on one of the most important professions of society, he said. When the United States expanded

westward, he said, no pioneers could have gone far without one.

"Without a blacksmith on the wagon trains, they were lost. If a wheel broke down, they were in trouble," Kertz said. "The blacksmith was more

important than a doctor."

Kertz was born in the Balkans, in an area that now is Croatia, to a German father and a mother from Brooklyn, N.Y. The family was evacuated to

Hungary and Austria during World War II.

As a teenager after the war, Kertz began working as a stone mason, often helping to restore 400- to 500-year-old castles, he said.

At 20, he came to the United States, found his way to California in 1959 and worked most of his life as a stone mason. He moved to Escondido

26 years ago, where he and his wife, Greta, raised three children.

In 1993, he took a blacksmithing class taught by Ewing, the blacksmith and wheelwright, that was one of the first at the Escondido History

Center.

Kertz was hooked, and soon began volunteering there regularly.

Now, he guides many new guild members and students when they go to the shop to work. He also teaches school groups, Boy Scouts and other

visitors about smithing.

"He's a great talker and he builds up everything, and he's a very good encourager, too," Ewing said this week.

Kertz said the key to being a good blacksmith is imagination. Ewing said Kertz is known for it.

"He's not only got a lot of talent, he's got a lot of ideas," Ewing said. "We call him the idea man."

Watching children stare in awe when the flames rise and the sparks fly is one of the joys of working at the shop in Grape Day Park, Kertz

said. But he said teaching new generations about their history is also important.

"I personally think, if you don't have a past, you don't have a future," Kertz said.

-- Contact staff writer Paul Eakins at (760) 740-5420 or peakins@nctimes.com.