Walter Scadden
Walter Scadden was born in 1943 in Hartford to Irish immigrant parents. Walter showed an early skill at drawing. He attended the Wadsworth Atheneum's Arts Development Program for Youth in the late 1950s, moving from that into an apprenticeship as a stonecutter in the Italian South End. After serving as a welder in the Marines, he found some old iron hardware that looked like it had a story to it, so he began to research the craft of blacksmithing. "In this area we're fortunate, in Coventry, Bolton, Columbia there's a lot of early work still in houses...the designs were excellent and they have lasted very well." Eager to try his hand at his own designs, in 1977 he set up a basic forge in Manchester and joined the fledgling group which has become the 350-strong New England Blacksmiths Association.
In his early years as a blacksmith Walter also worked as a city fireman. Smithing is a difficult trade with a volatile market, and to make a living Walter had to be versatile. He has made many different types of metal equipment, furniture, and tools, also taking orders for utilitarian hardware. But it is with his real love, architectural ironwork, that he has created his most beautiful - and functional - art. The challenge of ornamental blacksmithing lies in forging and shaping a strong, heavy material into lithe, curving forms; power and fire in the service of durability and grace.
An early achievement in Walter's career came in 1987 when he won a design competition sponsored by Gainesville (Georgia) Iron Works and U.S. Steel. "What interested me about the project was that after the design was completed it would be built by Francis Whitaker, a teacher of mine. Whitaker is my link to the Samuel Yellin legacy...I try to work in the discipline of Yellin who in my opinion was one of the finest traditional ironworkers. Whitaker worked for Yellin in Philadelphia in the 1920s and still maintains that type of discipline. So it was very interesting to participate in a competition where my mentor would actually construct something I designed." Walter pays homage through his work to other teachers and influences such as Philip Simmons of Charleston, German blacksmith Manfred Bredhol, and Samuel Baines in Birmingham, Alabama.
Walter produced his hand forged architectural ironwork from 20 foot lengths of "mild steel" cut down to 10 feet. He used actual wrought iron in restoration work but found that steel was preferable for the kind of work he did. Not produced after World War II, wrought iron has more mass but less strength than mild steel. He specialized in railings, gates - some of them massive in scale, balconies, lighting fixtures, window grilles, fireplace screens and tools, as well as hardware. "Along with these big ornamental architecture projects, I get orders to make forty hooks for a big pot rack up in Coventry."
Using a forge heated by gas rather than bituminous coal which is both dusty and hard to obtain, the steel is heated to a malleable state then formed by hammer, anvil, and tongs. After the shape is refined through skill and delicacy, any metal scale residue is removed by brushing. Traditionally a coating of linseed oil and beeswax would be applied after cleaning, but because this never really dries and attracts dust, Walter preferred bowling alley wax and a varnish; outdoor installations were protected with four or five coats of paint. Trial and error over many years led him to certain changes and innovations in traditional smithing techniques, "but the forging of all the pieces is done by hand with the old tools and the care and preciseness and symmetry is all there. I can make a living at that."
Examples of Walter's work can be seen in New Haven at Yale University's Harkness Quad where he restored two of Yellin's gate panels, in Manchester where his ironwork lamp posts are installed at Highland Park Plaza, and in numerous private homes throughout the country. He has taught at the John Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, the Brookfield Craft School in Connecticut, and with individual apprentices. He has trained naval architecture and maritime history students from the Williams College summer program in shipsmithing at Mystic Seaport Museum, and helped to restore the ironwork of the Amistad ship at the Seaport. In 1991, Walter was one of twelve blacksmiths from all over the world chosen to demonstrate at the Second World Congress of Ornamental Smiths in Aachen, Germany. Also a storyteller and writer, Walter produces plays and books of poetry and Connecticut historical tales.
"Most people think a blacksmith shoes horses, so my (architectural) work comes as a surprise...generally people don't acquaint blacksmithing with what it actually was, the handcrafting of a lot of this type of work."
"There's a form, a function to all this. You can make the most beautiful railing in the world but if it's not secure, if it's not installed well, then it's not worth anything; and that's a whole different part of the craft - there's a physics to gates and how they work and how they swing...."
"I've been fortunate to spend a lot of time with men like Whitaker and some other older blacksmiths...now I know the questions to ask...the beauty of this trade is I'll show you, you show someone else."
