Elmer Roush has been operating a full time blacksmithing business since 1987. His work includes specialized tools, 18th century style hardware, traditional and contemporary architectural work and a production line of candle holders, letter openers and fireplace tools.

Elmer began blacksmithing in 1970 and was self-taught for six years, after which he attended workshops at Arrowmont School of Crafts, Haystack School of Crafts and the John C. Campbell Folk School.  He has also studied blacksmithing in what was Czechoslovakia under Master smith Vaclav Jaros.

Elmer has taught blacksmithing at a number of schools including Peters Valley, Touchstone, Appalachian Center for Crafts, and the John C. Campbell Folk School. He assisted in setting up the Cearta Inneona blacksmithing school in Ireland in 1999 and was head instructor and acting CEO for the school for a year.

Elmer has demonstrated widely at local and state blacksmithing conferences across America and was invited to teach and demonstrate at the yearly blacksmiths’ gathering near Brisbane in Australia in 2001. He was a studio monitor at the Haystack School of Crafts and a resident artist at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina for eight years up to 2002.

Elmer recreates tools and implements using the time proven technologies that craftsmen from the earliest metal working period of our history would easily recognize. If a metal worker from ancient Babylon was time shifted into Elmer’s forge he would have no difficulty in recognizing most of the equipment and would surely delight in the improvements.

By breathing new life into these old metal craftsmen’s techniques Elmer is helping to preserve our metal working heritage that modern society is so dependent upon but yet has largely taken for granted and forgotten. Besides his products appealing to preservation and re-enactment groups and societies, there are interior designers, architects and home builders who will also want to enhance and enrich their environments with these outstanding items and by so doing introduce intriguing and beautiful historical artifacts to a new generation who would otherwise only get access to them in museum showcases.

The quality of Elmer’s hand-forged reconstructions is such that even museum experts might not readily identify them as being of modern origin and Elmer has had to take steps to guard against his products being resold as genuine antiquarian finds. To this end each item is deliberately coded with Elmer’s identifying mark discreetly placed so as not to compromise the visual authenticity.

While wanting to get these wonderful implements seen by a wider and more general public Elmer is happy to supply direct to museums where there is a need to supplement collections with otherwise unobtainable exhibits of the metalsmith’s arts.

Phone: (828) 835-7313  Email:   email@metcalferoush.com   

Roush Historic Ironwork, 18 Waldroup Road, Brasstown, NC, 28902, USA

Business hours: Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, EST   © MRFD Inc 2005, 2006, 2007

Items not listed as available can be made to order, please call or email