Welcome to the Wareham Forge, the work of Artisan Blacksmith Darrell Markewitz of Ontario Canada. Here traditional hand forged techniques are blended with original custom designs to create distinctive objects for garden or architecture. (What is called 'wrought iron work' by some.) A specialist in the Viking Age, creating reproductions for Museums and re-enactors. Offering training courses various aspects of Metalsmithing, plus instructional DVD's.
The Wareham Forge

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Main Sections

GALLERY

CUSTOM WORK

ARCHITECTURAL

for GARDENS

REPRODUCTIONS

TRAINING

IRON SMELTING

VIKING AGE

SITE INDEX

Songs of Distant Oceans

Sculptural Series Work

Atlantic Realm
'Atlantic Realm' is a series of pieces based on ideas spawned from my various trips out to the East Coast. (The image used in the title block above was taken the first time I saw an ocean, off Cape Breton in 1978).
I love beach combing. Not only is the environment itself cleansing for me (regardless of the weather), I have always be fascinated by the undersea world. (I started skin diving at about age 10.)
These are in fact some of the very first purely sculptural pieces I created (as opposed to objects where function was the primary criteria).

Enter the Atlantic Realm...
Shades of Ancient Seas
These pieces represent an ongoing series of designs, based on fossil fish and ancient sea creatures. Aggressively forged steel bars are pinched and folded to create spines and other bone like shapes. A long student of armour making, and interested in both fossils and insects since I was a child, my past work with hammered sheet was turned to forming bony plates, skulls and fins.

Enter the Shades of Ancient Seas...
Hallucigenia
The Burgess Shale in SE British Columbia is an absolutely unique deposit, rich in fossils, which dates to roughly 500 million years ago. First, the fine silt which eventually turned to stone has faithfully recorded even the soft tissues of the animals that once lived there. And what animals! Creatures from the 'Cambrian Explosion' show a bewildering array of types and body plans. The result of sudden evolution after a major extinction event, most types never survived into later ages. Some are so strange, so outright bizarre, that to our modern eyes they look to be the product of a crazed dream. The pieces in this newer series are inspired by these wonderful fossils.

Enter Halluciegenia...

Who is Darrell Markewitz?

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Unless otherwise indicated :
All text and photographs © Darrell Markewitz, the Wareham Forge.