Forty plates of meticulously rendered hinges, grilles, railings, latches, door knockers, and more — selected from English chapels, tombs, castles, and other structures — span more than 600 years of metalworking history.

All the fascinating properties of iron and other metals can be creatively explored with 52 color plates and 717 b/w photos and drawings and detailed text. The author discusses the ironworking shop, forge and tools, including anvils, vises, hammers, tongs, punches, centrifugal blowers and machine tools. Forging procedures are explicitly shown.

Artists have made gates and fences in wrought iron over the centuries in ornamental designs shown here in hundreds of photos. The restoration of wrought iron is discussed and ironwork examples are organized according to their uses, such as gratings that protect doors and windows, entries and gates from Europe in the Middle Ages, artistic creations of the 17th and 18th centuries, and works of our own day.

In succession with Blacksmith’s Craft and a facsimile edition of the original 1953 instruction manual, Wrought Ironwork is a practical and essential guide with a focus on technique for the modern smith. With 33 step-by-step lessons and coordinating photography for making a variety of scrolls – from ribbon-end scrolls to beveled scrolls – water leaves, and wavy bars, and eventually onto the creation and assembly of an ornamental gate, practice the fundamentally vital methods to this timeless trade.

From an exceptional collection of the finest examples of German ironwork comes this rich source of royalty-free images for artists and craftspeople. More than 270 illustrations depict a broad variety of magnificent ironworks from the city of Düsseldorf, with finely rendered examples of the craft ranging from elaborate castle gates to ornate weather vanes. Balustrades, screens, balcony railings, and other decorative ironworks abound in this handsome compilation. Derived from a rare, turn-of-the-century portfolio, these splendid designs offer uncommon glimpses of a rich array of motifs that are sure to inspire and delight designers, architecture enthusiasts, antique lovers, and devotees of vintage ironwork.

Artists, illustrators, architectural and art historians, restorers, dealers, collectors--anyone interested in historical ironwork--will welcome this magnificent treasury of decorative designs produced between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries. Over 400 illustrations on 86 plates, reprinted from a rare nineteenth-century French volume of copperplate engravings, reveal a remarkable variety of decorative and utilitarian objects. Focusing primarily on German Gothic ironwork designs that embellished palaces, cathedrals, castles, houses, and other structures, the plates depict hinges ornamented with mythical sea creatures and dragons, door knockers decorated with female figures and human heads, keyhole plates wreathed in foliage, chests reinforced with iron bands displaying elaborate artwork, intricately laced metalwork on screens and grilles, elaborately designed keys, finials, candle stands, and a host of other architectural and ornamental elements. Notes to the plates identify the objects and provide, when available, a source and date for each. A splendid record of the inspired decorative flourishes of the past, these beautifully detailed plates will also serve as a lavish source of inspiration for today's designers. Dover (1996) republication of the plates from "Serrurerie, ou les Ouvrages en Fer Forgedu Moyen-Age et de la Renaissance, " published by Librairie Tross, Paris, 1870.