A Week in Ukraine: A Great Adventure: Jacob Haggarty

The blacksmithing festival in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, is one of the major annual festivals celebrating hot metal and one of the few that falls within the academic year.

Last year, Rhodri Schewela-Davies flew solo and attended the festival. This year four students and one of last year’s graduates decided on an adventure.

Writing about his adventure, Jacob Haggarty notes:

“Recently some friends and I had the chance to go to Ivano-Frankivsk’s annual forging festival in Ukraine. The time I had there was amazing, it was brilliant to see so many good people from all over the world taking part in our beloved craft, and the huge range of cultural approaches to forging was fascinating. I’ve made a lot of new friends, both home and abroad, and I’ve made a lot of plans to see each of them over the summer, and I fully intend to do my best to stick to my word. In fact, I’m going back to Ukraine later this summer for another art festival! Good times ahead. I thoroughly recommend that more blacksmiths (and anyone who is interested at all really!) check it out next year; it’s something you’ll very quickly want to make a regular event.

The forging event itself was held in the Bastion ruins in Ivano-Frankivsk, and happened to run at the same time as another celebration of the city itself, so there were people everywhere, and always lots to explore, so never a dull moment! We were given some basic equipment (shared fire and a somewhat battered anvil) and told to get forging and have fun, which we certainly did. Honestly, the amount of real work we did would be embarrassing, if we weren’t having a blast at the same time. A lot of other blacksmiths had come well prepared, and we turned up with a paltry two hammers, and six lengths of steel to make tools from scratch… Needless to say, we’ve learned our lesson for next year.”

The day that Jacob got back from Ukraine he discovered that he had been selected to make a railing panel for the cenotaph at Ypres 2016, so this promises to be a year full of adventures and travelling with his rucksack full of hammers.

Del