Williamsburg Update #1
Josh Rachita, Historical
Interpreter
Hello
all,
I have just finished my first week here at
Colonial Williamsburg. I have been able to work in the forge the last
three days of this week. The other day I was doing some HR things, getting
fitted for costumes, and doing some reading about the site and the city here. I
also was able to go see Yorktown, the two Jamestown sites, and on the drive up
I stopped at Appomattox Courthouse.
The building I will be working in
the summer is called the James Anderson Blacksmith Shop and Public Armoury. The
reconstructed shop was built in 2012 on the original foundations of the 1778
building which was built to serve as a public armoury to help repair the
Continental Army’s muskets and furnish other iron and steel objects needed for
the war effort. Archeologists knew where to install windows, and the subsequent
work benches, due to the array of debris that was cast outside the windows by
blacksmiths in the 18th century.
This week I have been working on
nails and tasting spoons. Over the course of about a day’s work I was able to
make 150 nails. This number may seem like a lot (or maybe it doesn’t) but
specialized nail makers in the time period were averaging 2,300 nails a day. In
the 18th century, specialization was the key to cheap goods. With a
labor shortage, especially among skilled tradesmen in America, imported goods
from England were a third of the price of American made goods. This meant that
the “village blacksmith” was more often fixing broken items or doing custom
work than building stock to sell for retail.
Luckily, today the museum has enough
demand for forged goods which means the blacksmith shop is continually making
historic reproduction pieces for use by other interpreters and buildings around
the museum. I suspect that once my nails are deemed adequate, they will be
amongst the 15,000 that will be used to build a new storehouse for the
carpenter’s yard.
I am already seeing the quality of
my work increase even after only a week here. Working alongside six excellent
full-time smiths and having their advice and instruction has been extremely
helpful. I have even been able to speak with some guests as they peek through
the window near my forge and have been able to share new material I have
learned through my reading and conversations. On my days off, I have been
enjoying the wealth of programs CW has to offer and visiting other trade shops
around town. I also sat down and had a great conversation with one of the
interpreters who plays Sarah Trebell, the owner of the Raleigh Tavern in the
1760s, about her experience in public history.
I am working on getting some pictures of me working in the forge from a photographer who took some of me last week, and I’ll get those to y’all when I can. For now, I’ve included some pictures of my work thus far and some other pictures around the city and the shop on my day off.
No comments:
Post a Comment