MEDIEVAL Helmet created by Sean Elliott for the World Championship Blacksmithing Competition A figurine of bent horse shoes becomes a cowboy. Added to his stance are a cowboy hat and a pair of fringed chaps. He is holding a lasso and is obviously ready for action.

There are several companion pieces, each basically formed from horse shoes, some sitting on a fence, some holding other poses, one even riding a horse. Each of them is funny, clever – marvellous.

They are the handiwork of Sean Elliott, a Dufferin blacksmith who earns his living shoeing horses in the main, but who also creates works of art through his blacksmithing trade. The figurines, which are all made from horseshoes he forges, are just a few of his overall artistic production, for he has made a variety of pieces, from large pieces of furniture and to roses with delicately hammered petals.

Originally from Cape Breton but until two years ago a resident of Alberta since childhood, Mr. Elliott was for some years in the aircraft business, making airbuses for an American company. However, reading the writing on the wall as far as the business was concerned, he decided to go into another line of trade altogether. Casting about for what he thought might interest him, he realized one day that he was tired of paying his blacksmith to shoe his horses.

“I could do that,” he decided and applied to Olds College, an agricultural college in the town of Olds, Alberta. “Olds College,” as he explained, “is one of the premier institutions teaching blacksmithing in North America. My application was accepted as one of 16 out of 50 applicants.”

The first thing an Olds College student learns is how to make his own tools at the forge. “It taught us the basis of forging different tool steels,” Mr. Elliott said.

Once graduated and out in the world, Mr. Elliott chose the route of only ever putting a shoe on a horse that he makes himself.

“If I don’t make it, it doesn’t go on the horse,” is his comment.

He began working with veterinarians, learning to trim horses and ponies with foot problems, to correct, align and, in many cases, even cure such potentially life-threatening conditions as founder.

While he was busy with this learning curve, he was also very interested in the artistic side of his craft. Forever interested in working with people who can teach him new skills, Mr. Elliott worked with a cabinet maker who showed him how to work with different woods, how to bring out their full natural beauty with old-fashioned methods, methods that might be time consuming but that produce the most wonderful results.

So, he has a simple but elegant piece in his portfolio of a wooden blanket box, carefully finished and trimmed with darkened steel handles and hinges that he made in his forge.

Like other artists, Mr. Elliott is open to accepting commissions and possibly one of his favourites is the archway he made for Calgary high school. stands freely, marking a passage between two sections of the school’s cafeteria. Two forged figures are climbing either side of arms stretched out toward the star that crowns the arch, encouraging students with the theme of achieving their own ambitions- their symbol to “reach for the stars”.

For sure, Mr. Elliott considers his best work so far is the Mediaeval helmet he designed and made for the Creative Forging Class of the World Championship Blacksmithing Competition (WCBC). There are blacksmithing competitions all over North America, where the smithies show off their talents for forging and placing the shoes they make. Only the World Championships include an “art” element to entries.

Creating the helmet followed his work with Peter Fuller who is a world master at making Mediaeval reproductions. Mr. Fuller was commissioned to make a replica of George Clifford’s armour. In case you do not know, George Clifford was Queen Elizabeth I’s Knight Champion. The original armour was sold (for a vast sum) to an American museum, where Mr. Fuller was permitted to go, in offhours, to make drawings of the exterior and interior of the armour in order to completely reproduce it.

The intricacies and formations that Mr. Elliott learned during his participation of creating the armour replica with Mr. Fuller led him to create his own imagined “replica.” Entirely of his own creation, the helmet is wholly made by himself, bar the brass rivets. For the frame he used Damascus steel, “which is the toughest and from which the best knives are made,” as he told me.

The body of the helmet, beaten from mild steel, is leather lined, which leather work is Mr. Elliott’s handicraft too.

He even made the chain mail that would protect the neck and side of the face, were the helmet ever in demand.

Atop the helmet, as the

crown, is a sculpted horse, a crowning glory, with flowing mane and tail.

“It’s real horse hair,” he remarked.

Romance brought Mr. Elliott to Ontario where he has settled in Grand Valley, bringing with him his Border Collie Shank and

sweep his tools. Since his arrival not quite two years ago, he has been commissioned to do a decorative piece for the Chop House Restaurant. He has established a relationship with the Caledon Equine Hospital, to continue his work with healthy and damaged hooves. He has met a lot of people, building up his clientele.

All in all, it is a good life here in Ontario too.

While the shoeing pays his mortgage, he is an artist by nature and the pull of his creativity means that he is always thinking, at least, about new pieces and looking for the time to create them.

“I like my pieces to have a function,” he said, “not just collecting dust. made a Celtic knot as table base a few years ago,

with a friend. By the end, was really impressive. Speaking of Celtic, that gives me an idea for some other things...”

Mr. Elliott can be reached at thevillagesmithy @hotmail.com.