Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

Welcome to BlacksmitHER Radio, spotlighting male and female blacksmiths around the world.

 

We’re committed to providing a host of resources to male and female blacksmiths of all ability levels through podcast interviews spotlighting your fellow blacksmiths. The podcast interviews are designed to help improve your metal working skills while providing an opportunity to connect with others who share your passion of blacksmithing!  

Apr 6, 2015

 

Carley Eisenberg has a blacksmithing business called Iron Mountain Forge where she forges sculptural and functional artwork in Boone, NC.  In February she was on the HGTV’s “Ellen’s Design Challenge” as a furniture designer contestant, the executive producer was Ellen DeGeneres.  You can watch the series and see what Carley created on the show here on YouTube, here.  Her beautiful designs kept her on the show for 3 weeks.

 

What We Talked About:

 

  • Her start in metal was welding and then asked a friend to build her a gas forge and started to blacksmith on her own.

 

  • After a month of blacksmithing on her own, she applied for a job at Oak Hill Iron.  The owner asked her to TIG weld two pieces of aluminum right on the spot and said “If you can TIG weld these two pieces together you have a job”.  She ended up staying there for 10 months until she was asked to be on the Ellen Design Challenge show.

 

  • Carley started an Etsy page in 2010 first to sell her wood working pieces, such as cutting boards, then she started to add her blacksmithing pieces to sell.  She has done quite well with Etsy having 171 sales since 2010. After the premiere of one of the Ellen’s Design Challenge Carley had 12 sales from her Etsy page within an hour!

 

  • Carley came up with a really cool technique while she was on the show, it involves sinking in the flat sides of square tubing and then twisting the tube, the result looks like a twisted ribbon.  You can see it in Carley’s ribbon table pictured on this page.

 

  • Carley has been able to raise her hourly rate since being on the HGTV show from $65 to $100!

 

  • Her income mainstay in her business is making beer taps for the Appalachian Mountain Brewery in Boone NC, about 50 taps every week.  The taps look like huge hops made of metal, pictured on this page.

 

  • Carley’s shop is in a co-op type building that houses 12 different artists, she pays $500/month

 

  • One of her blacksmithing highlights was taking a class from Clay Spencer at the John C Campbell Folk School, it was the advanced traditional joinery class that was a week long.

 

  • The “Ellen’s Design Challenge” was exactly that, a challenge!  Designing a piece of furniture in a short amount of time, three nine hour days, was the most stressful part of the challenge.  Unfortunately Carley was voted off the show with her 4th design of the show, which was a couch.

 

  • We talk about a subsection of her website called “Red Cloak Studios”, dedicated to art and furniture pieces that are designed from the original versions of different fables and fairytales. Carley talks about the symbolism behind her “Dear Rocking Chair” she made, it’s supposed to be the wolf cloaked as the grandmother, a nice old comfortable rocking chair enticing you to sit down.  The chair took her 70 hours to make with over 100 plug welds in the whole piece.

 

Carley Eisenberg’s Links:

 

Website – http://www.carleyeisenberg.com/ 

 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/IronMountainForgeNC

 

Esty page -  https://www.etsy.com/shop/IronMountainForge?ref=l2-shopheader-name

 

Twitter – @Carley_imf

 

A Big Thank You to today’s sponsor – NOMMA, www.nomma.org