Against the landscape of a windy mesa in Ilfeld, NM Blacksmith Christopher Thomson combines the elements of music with those of nature to create his iron designs. In 1998 Thomson

"I don't try to force the steel to do something that it doesn't do naturally... I'm trying to be sensitive to when a taper is just right, or when a scroll is just right," Thomson said in a recent episode of Modern Masters on Home & Garden cable TV, explaining his improvisational method.
By listening to the music accompanying Thomson's video, it becomes apparent how his designs and his music follow forms
dictated by nature, rather than by material demand. Viewers observe how he effortlessly forms the legs of his chairs so that their perfect balance is attained. By merely wrapping tapered bars around circular jigs he makes perfect half-circle legs. (See photos above.)
After almost twenty years as a self-employed potter, carpenter, and artist-blacsmith, Thomson opened his own blacksmith shop dedicated to the upscale

ABOVE AND LEFT: The legs of these tables and chairs are formed by wrapping hot meal bars and flats around circular jigs of various diameters. The perfectness of the circles makes for balance.

design and production of forged metal furniture and accessories. Today galleries across the Southwest and national media sources, like Architectural Digest

Corn
Plant
Gate

and The Anvil's Ring, feature his work.
For more information of Thomson, his music video, and his work, call his studio at (505) 421-2645.

produced a "music" video illustrating his artistic method of combining improvisational music with metalsmithing. Thomson composed and performed the music for his video, which serves as a marketing piece for his hand-forged furniture and accessories.
"I improvise flute tunes to interact with these magical places. I find that ideas first explored musically often find their way into my steel work" Thomson says.
Thomson has studied the flute since childhood, with master players, and as a music major in college. The video illustrates how Thomson's sensitivity to music and nature materialize through iron with his swift but graceful interaction with metal and fire.
The video is twenty minutes long. Without dialogue, it portrays Thomson and his crew forging several of his functional metal designs, including those pictured here: the wave bed, dining room table, fireplace set, and snake lamp. Thomson shows a keen understanding of how physical forms affect each other. For example, the arrangement of his studio allows for maximum maneuverability. His gurney system and use of jigs and clamps further suggest Thomson's sensitivity to his medium.

ABOVE: Christopher Thomson forges steel, home furniture in his Ilfeld, NM studio. The studio's gurney system enables swift transport from fire to anvil and other workstations.