Robert Thomas carries Charleston’s most storied trade into the present, forging architectural and sculptural ironwork the old-fashioned way
Robert Thomas didn’t set out to become a blacksmith. The Pennsylvania native was studying finance when he decided he wanted to make something tangible instead of “moving paper around.” Having learned to weld while repairing railings for his township parks department, he was drawn to the oldworld craft, pursuing blacksmithing apprenticeships across the US and Europe and earning a degree from the National School of Blacksmithing in Hereford, England.
In 2008, living in Charleston, Thomas read a Post and Courier article about legendary local ironsmith Philip Simmons. “I never felt like I worked a day in my life,” Simmons told the reporter. Inspired, Thomas bought a forge and an anvil, set up shop in a one-car West Ashley garage, and began practicing with hand-forged hooks.
Seventeen years later, Robert Thomas Iron Design (RTID) operates a full-scale forge at the Navy Yard Charleston’s Design District. A team of 30 blacksmiths and artisans produces everything from custom gates and railings to sculptural furniture, decorative hardware, and carbon-steel cookware. “There aren’t enough of them in this country, or the world, for what we’re trying to do,” he says of the skilled professionals. “We have to train people. We bring in those who are interested in the craft and take them on a journey to become really good at it.” It’s not lost on Thomas that his career was made possible by Simmons. “I know that he paved the way for me to do this.”
Thomas describes his approach as traditional blacksmithing applied to contemporary design. On the historic peninsula—where the City’s Board of Architectural Review and Preservation Society of Charleston scrutinize additions to the streetscape—his work draws heavily from historic precedent. However, he does incorporate details that feel distinctly his own. “Whenever possible, I add an embellishment that feels uniquely ours and leave our signature,” he explains. “That way, in 100 years, the same way I can walk around now and tell where a piece came from, somebody could look at our work and know.”
Few commissions carry the emotional weight of the ironwork Thomas and his team created for Woodland Cemetery at Clemson University last year. Positioned near the unmarked graves of enslaved people and visible to more than 80,000 football fans on game days from the shadow of Memorial Stadium’s “Death Valley,” the gates mark a newly revealed entrance to the site. “The design has symbolism throughout—root structures that grow into a tree, which grows into a floral arrangement at the top, symbolizing new life,” Thomas says.
RTID also manufactures carbon-steel cookware for Charleston-based Smithey Ironware Company, a line that complements its custom commissions. Each pan begins as a raw slab of steel at one end of the Navy Yard forge and emerges as a one-of-a-kind piece of cookware—no two are identical, even among thousands produced. For Thomas, each of the 30 steps required to craft a pan also serves as training for more complex architectural work. “I want thousands of opportunities for people to interact with hand-forged ironwork,” he says.
In the Blood: Robert Thomas’s mother, Angela Trotta Thomas, is a professional artist represented by Reinert Fine Art Gallery downtown. His father is an engineer.
Heavy Lifting: The gates and fencing for Woodland Cemetery at Clemson University required several tons of steel and a year of fabrication.
School of Hard Knocks: The studio partners with the American College of the Building Arts to help train the next generation of blacksmiths through internships and apprenticeships.
On the Shelf: Check out Thomas’s coffee-table book, The Art & Craft of the Blacksmith: Techniques and Inspiration for the Modern Smith (Quarry Books, 2018).
Learn More: www.robertthomasiron.com
