Striking out

And he still doesn’t understand why. But, as Ruth Campbell discovers, his bold decision has paid off.

BLACKSMITH and artist David Stephenson works in splendid isolation in the middle of open countryside on the North York Moors. But he is never short of company as he forges his exquisite, sculptural metalwork.

He shares his workspace, which is one half of a huge, agricultural building, with a 40-strong herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle, while chickens wander in and out throughout the day.

It’s a far cry from industrial Teesside, where he was brought up, and from his previous lifestyle as a qualified geologist and zoologist, when he travelled the world teaching in places as far flung as Massachusetts, Madrid and Bangkok.

The animals’ noise and antics amuse this 48-year-old largely selftaught craftsman, who is constantly inspired by the countryside around him in Lockton, North Yorkshire.

Just the other day, he says, he found himself stopping with his two labrador dogs to marvel at the beauty of a frost-covered cobweb on the hedgerow during his one-mile walk along a back lane to his forge from the 17th Century stone cottage he shares with partner, landscape painter Sue Slack. When it snows, he cross-country skis through the open countryside between the two.

“At home, we have views over the Hole of Horcum, I waste a lot of time looking out of the window. From my workshop, I look into Newton Dale and back across Cropton Forest. I can hear the steam trains from the North York Moors railway a couple of fields away.”

His latest exhibition, which opened on Saturday, features inspirational images taken from this landscape throughout the year – including detailed studies of snowflakes, adders and leaves – which he has created in a series of 12 large copper relief panels.

The title of the show – He Vivido (“I have lived”) – at the Ryedale Folk Museum is taken from a Spanish quotation he saw etched in charcoal into the side of a cave when he was sheltering from the danger of avalanche while on a walking holiday in the Pyrenees:

Only happy is he who,

Each day can say,

I have lived.

“That struck a very big chord with me,” he says. The subject of each panel represents what it is which, in some way, has allowed me to say: ‘Today, I have lived’. It’s about the things that have impressed me, mostly in this area, the things that make you appreciate being alive and realise how wonderful life is.”

This rural idyll is a huge contrast to David’s urban upbringing as the son of a British Steel manager in Redcar. He came to blacksmithing late in life, just over ten years ago, and he still doesn’t quite understand what made him do it.

He made the leap after he and Sue returned to Britain from high pressure jobs working as heads of department at a British International School abroad. Both had always loved the North York Moors and coast and wanted to settle here.

“We wanted a break. I just knew I wanted to be a blacksmith, but the reason why is a big mystery. Partly, I was attracted to the physicality of it, as well as the creativity. Handmade work in any medium had long fascinated me.”

Initially, he was self-taught, having set up a forge in an old goat shed in a nearby hamlet after buying some second hand blacksmithing equipment. He examined things other blacksmiths made and tried to work out how it was done.

“I worked evenings, copying other people’s work. What I produced at first was terrible, a huge heap of rubbish on the floor. When the heap got too big, I called the scrap merchant in.”

It was a loud and messy business, which is why he ended up working in agricultural buildings. “It’s difficult to find suitable space to do it in. You can’t learn about it from books. It is a physical craft, it’s about putting in the time. You only know how a material works when it’s hot and how it moves when you hit it. You just have to get on and do it.”

Many of David’s friends, he admits, thought he was unwise to give up a successful career and take a leap into the unknown. But those who knew him well appreciated he never approached things lightly.

“They knew it wasn’t just a whim,”

he says.

He went on to work with a local blacksmith to get some experience and then spent six months part-time with Brian Russell, of Newsham, near Barnard Castle. “He is just the best blacksmith in this country at the moment,” says David.

That gave him the confidence to set up his business properly, full time, and he also persuaded the Countryside Agency to accept him on an apprentice course, aimed at 16 to 18-year-olds, attending college one week in eight. “I couldn’t afford to go full time,” he says.

It has been a struggle at times, especially since Sue is an artist too.

“There have been some fairly hairy moments, having no money coming in. Cash flow is often difficult, sometimes I pay the mortgage and sometimes Sue pays.”

But it has never got so bad, he says, that he considered giving up. “Sue works in a pub waitressing two nights a week to give us some steady income and we can turn to temporary teaching jobs if necessary.”

Now many of those friends who thought he was unwise to leave steady employment tell him they wish they had the nerve to do something similar: “People say they admire me for striking out and doing it, that they envy my lifestyle. Of course, if they cut the apron strings of regular employment and income, they could do it too. But then, I see people going off on lots of holidays and think ‘I wish I could do that’.”

David and Sue don’t have children, but they still have a mortgage and loan to pay off and this is a positive driving force. “It means we can’t afford to rest on our laurels and take it easy,” he says.

As well as his artistic creations, David works on design projects with schools, including a current project in Stockton designing street furniture.

He has been commissioned to make gates for clients such as the National Trust’s Treasurer’s House in York and also runs blacksmithing courses.

Up until now, he has specialised in ironwork but the copper panels in his latest exhibition have taken him in a different direction. The process, known as repousse work, involves drawing a design onto the copper with small chisels and then pushing or punching the picture out from the back.

He got the idea after discovering a carved relief panel by the artist Eric Gill on the font at St Joseph’s Church in Pickering. “The beautiful, gentle subtlety of Gill’s relief work opened the possibilities of repousse work, which is wonderfully tactile,” he says. “Like any drawing, it’s difficult, but crucial, to know exactly when to stop.”

What the cattle think of it all, he’ll never know...

■ David Stephenson: He Vivido.

Until December 6, Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton le Hole, North Yorkshire. Admission to the gallery is free, and opening times are daily from 10am to 4.30pm.

Tel: 01751-417367; email gallery@ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk