You Go, Girl!

Seven local women who define—and redefine—success on their own terms.

(page 5 of 8)

Fired Up

At the Newlin Grist Mill in Glen Mills, blacksmith Kelly Smyth is wearing a blouse uniformly smudged with soot. Her hands are just as black. “Wait, let me make myself pretty,” she says with a faux pampering of her grayish, short-cropped hair.

She scoops a bucket of water from the millpond and totes it to her shop. Enormous antique bellows fan her fire, but slowly and selectively, Smyth pours water onto a mound of coal. She burns 100 pounds a week, and sometimes 5,000 pounds a year. “This is called working a wet fire,” she says.

Smyth has worked plenty here and at other historic sites. Recently, as part of the reconstruction of St. Mary’s City, Md., she reproduced the hinges for a chapel door and the hardware for its print house. But it was work on the Kalmar Nyckel—a replica of the ship that first transported Swedish settlers to Delaware in 1638—that brought her to the region. With a bent for nautical hardware, she’s worked on five historic replica vessels, including Discovery for the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement in Virginia.

Originally from upstate New York, Smyth has a degree in outdoor education from Northeastern University in Boston. She first learned about blacksmithing at Ashokan Field Campus, an environmental education center in the Catskills. Later, she was a shore-side industries interpreter at the Mystic (Conn.) Seaport Museum before leaving for a year’s experience outside Kiel, Germany, in an architectural shop. There, she learned sculpture, gates and railings. “The big, heavy stuff,” Smyth says.

Smyth spent five years in a blacksmith’s costume at Colonial Williamsburg before connecting with shipbuilder Allen C. Rawl and his Kalmer Nyckel. She’s also participated in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and consulted with the Smithsonian to review hardware recovered from Cleopatra’s Barge. Built in Salem, Mass., in 1816, it was owned by the king of Hawaii when it sank in 1824.

At Newlin Grist Mill, Smyth is unsalaried but gets the space to work and teach, paying for her own materials. She’s sought grants, but she’s only been a bridesmaid so far—though she isn’t dressed like one.

“I don’t know any other female blacksmiths, but they’re out there,” Smyth says. “It’s dirty work, but I’ve paid for my truck with money I didn’t spend on pantyhose and makeup.”

—J.F.P.

To learn more, visit newlingristmill.org.

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