The Goat N Hammer is an Atlanta-based forge, complete with a few blacksmiths, a roaring fire and anvil. It's been quietly building a following for its bladesmithing and knife grinding instruction since 2013. These blacksmiths are on to something, particularly with the popular Hammer Therapy session, where at least once a month they rent out 10 anvils and four grinders, first come, first serve.
By October, this unusual artisanal metalwork hub must move from the Goat Farm Arts Center where they've been hammering since 2013. But Mark Hopper and Jessica Collins, the loosely organized partnership that runs Goat N Hammer, is determined Atlanta will still be able to come to them to work metal and grind blades to their hearts' content.
"Sadly, they are beginning redevelopment of the property this fall and so we must leave," Collins says. "We aren't really ready to move, but we definitely don't want to shut down."
So the pair and their associates will come out swinging. They've had an offer accepted on a property nine miles away in downtown Smyrna. It involves a lot more space for classrooms − they'd be moving from 1,600 square feet to 7,000. And it's not a done deal. They still need a 10 percent down payment − about $50,000 − for an SBA loan to cover the rest of the build-out and purchase. They've already got a Go Fund Me for that, and it's classic Goat N Hammer. Donors don't get door prizes just because they can afford to give the most, for example.
Instead, everyone's entered in a drawing for gifts, one of them a handmade sword.
Even though it's a huge shift, in a way the move and the funding approach are just further evidence that a quirky but heartfelt business model can succeed in Atlanta. The two principles themselves are pretty unusual.
Collins has a bachelor's of fine arts with a concentration in sculpture and ceramics. She says she focused primarily on pottery in school: "That's my background in making things. How I came into blacksmithing? The easiest answer is that I became friends with a blacksmith."
The longer story there is that Collins was one of the founding board members of a business called Mass Collective that spent a lot of time trying to renovate a building and gradually decided to offer art education in other artisans' shops. Collins was friends with Hopper, he wanted to teach some classes out of his shop for the group. She thought she should find out what the heck she was going to be selling.
"I took one and I just never stopped," she says. "I spent about two or three years of forging almost every day before I stopped doubting myself."
Along the way, she and Hopper became fast friends, the kind that chime in on each other's thoughts and poke gentle fun.
Collins will tell you Hopper has a problem with office chairs, for example. "He collects orphaned office chairs," she chides, "like people who pick up animals off the street; he does this with office chairs. He may have 10?" Those chairs will have to move with them, along with 15-20 literal tons of stuff.
Credit: Contributed by Goat N Hammer Atlanta
Credit: Contributed by Goat N Hammer Atlanta
Hopper says he ended up here because he's is "very badly dyslexic," he says with a Scottish lilt, "and so being I wasn't going to be a research scientist of something of such nature, I found a trade and started to study blacksmithing when I was 15. Quinel's Forge in Surrey, England − I got my start in education there."
He also did a stint at Hereford Blacksmithing college and traveled and learned from different people, in East Africa, America and the British Isles.
A man of sparse words and generous humor, he describes his reasons for coming to Georgia: "My wife moved to here and I followed."
The story gets a little embellishment to reveal that Hopper met his wife in Kenya, where he taught blacksmithing, and she came to study at Kennesaw State University.
These two blacksmiths "eat a higher protein diet so we don't weigh ourselves with carbs," Hopper explains in a British accent.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
Collins, who chimes in just like Hopper, gets more specific about the snacks: "Nuts, eggs, fruits, sweet potatoes." She's been teased about that last snack, which she carries in this oversized bag, along with perhaps a boiled egg. "I like foods that come with their own wrapper."
They're not the only blacksmith offering in the Atlanta area.
There's Jason Smithworks's Iron & Design in Decatur, which bills itself as an artistic blacksmith shop and offers a beginner class; Michael Dillon's Dillon Forge just north of Atlanta in Crabapple, which is the artistic's own spot; and Nelms Creekmur Forge, the province of the blacksmith of the same name in Atlanta's Lake Claire neighborhood, who's been known to teach a class or two. But they may be the only one with a blacksmith who wears a kilt.
Hopper conducted sort of a one-man clinical study of apparel that would help him feel better when he injured his back about five years ago. He suffered nerve damage that basically paralyzed half his left leg. It was part experiment, part intuition that had him wearing sarongs at home and then discovering that kilts would offer the same comfort at work.
He does have Johnstone clan tarlatans, but they stay home in favor of a stack of "work kilts" that enabled him to stop pain medications. "I could have worn a tutu, mumu or a kilt," he quips. "I was going for the tutu but everyone else said it was a bad look for me."
Goat N Hammer
1200 Foster Street B8 LMR-10, Atlanta, GA 30318. http://www.goatnhammer.com/
Classes range from $20 hammer therapy sessions to $600 for an intensive, two-day bladesmithing course where you will make your own trench knife.
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