Metalsmith
craftsman fashioning tools or works of art out of various metals
A metalsmith or simply smith is a craftsperson fashioning useful items (for example, tools, kitchenware, tableware, jewelry, armor and weapons) out of various metals. Smithing is one of the oldest metalworking occupations. Shaping metal with a hammer (forging) is the archetypical component of smithing. Often the hammering is done while the metal is hot, having been heated in a forge. Smithing can also involve the other aspects of metalworking, such as refining metals from their ores (traditionally done by smelting), casting it into shapes (founding), and filing to shape and size.
The prevalence of metalworking in the culture of recent centuries has led Smith and its equivalents in various languages to be a common occupational surname (German Schmidt or Schmied, Portuguese Ferreiro, Ferreira, French Lefèvre, Spanish Herrero, Italian Fabbri, Ferrari, Ferrero, Ukrainian Koval etc.). As a suffix, -smith connotes the meaning of a specialized craftsperson—for example, wordsmith, meaning one who "smiths words", i.e. a writer.
History
In pre-industrialized times, smiths held high or special social standing since they supplied the metal tools needed for farming (especially the plough) and warfare.
Types of smiths
A metalsmith is one who works with or has the knowledge and the capacity of working with "all" metals.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Metalsmith” as craftsman fashioning tools or works of art out of various metals. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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This entry incorporates text from “Metalsmith” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.