Idaho blacksmith captures art honor

BOISE — Recipients of this year's Idaho Governor's Awards in the Arts include arts patrons, two painters, a dancer, a silversmith, a Nez Perce elder, an orchestra director, an opera director — and a blacksmith.

In a field of mostly fine-arts types, Nahum Hersom's award for traditional and folk art is unique. No other blacksmith has ever received it.

"I was amazed that I got it with all the people in Idaho who do art and craft work," he said. "On the other hand, this is big craft work, not the rinky-dink stuff."

Few who know his work would argue. Hersom is to a common blacksmith what a Monet is to an Elvis on velvet. He hasn't made a horseshoe in years, but he's credited with keeping an ancient art form alive in the United States.

Don Kemper of the Artist Blacksmith Association of North America calls Hersom "an internationally recognized master in the craft and art of repousse metal working. He is recognized as the elder statesman of the handful of masters of repousse."

Repousse is an art form in which designs on metal are raised in relief by hammering it from the reverse side. Dating to ancient times and widely practiced in Europe in the 16th through 18th centuries, it was becoming a lost art in the United States when Hersom walked into the shop of master metal worker Valentin Goelz in Los Angeles more than 60 years ago.

"I was awed," he said. "I asked him how I could learn, and he said I didn't want to because it was hard, dirty work and nobody was doing it anymore. But he took me as his student, and now I'm known all over the world. If you look up repousse on the Internet, you'll find me."

Samples of his work can be found in his home, his shop and a book he wrote on repousse: intricate metal leaves and flowers, swags and scallops, fleur-de-lis, a mask of a Roman god wearing a crown of grapes. He works with metals from iron and copper to silver and gold.

He starts a project by drawing a pattern on paper. Then he punches tiny holes in the pattern, like dots in a connect-the dots drawing. That done, he cuts the metal into the proper shape with a band saw and pounds the dots with hammers and punches to form the design.

"It's tedious, time-consuming work," he said. "It's not something you just come out here and wham, bam and whap at. You have to be deliberate and conscientious."