- Alan Rogers Ironworks is a creative endeavor begun by Alan Rogers many years ago. He began blacksmithing in 1978 when he was learning to make horseshoes and tools for horseshoeng at Eastern School of Ferry in Martinsville VA.Alan began working as a farrier and continued in that profession for seven years. This helped him pay for a master’s degree at Clemson University and he wrote his master’s thesis on late medieval English history .
- Upon receiving the opportunity to finish his PhD at Emory University, Alan took a job as a caretaker at Vogt Riding Academy, the last riding academy inside the perimeter in Atlanta, GA. There he had the opportunity to work for Joseph and Teresa Vote Karma equestrians with 50 years experience in horsemanship and specifically dressage. Many of the horses at the Academy were Lippizaners, who could trace their lineage to the 16th century and the time his dissertation covered.
- In 1989, he and his wife Ellie bought a small farm outside of Atlanta and he began Walnut Grove Forge . He continued to design furniture and home furnishings throughout that time and began building gates and railings of all sorts as well.
- During this time, he taught at Emory University for five years and completed his dissertation with a focus on late medieval and renaissance horsemanship in England.Upon receiving his PhD in 1992, Alan began his blacksmithing business in earnest and built several driveway gates and hundreds of feet of rail and fencing, focusing on hand forged elements in all of these projects. This included putting 10,000 pounds of forged work in the 54,000 square foot mansion built by 5 time World Champion boxer, Evander Holyfield . The house is now own by Rick Ross, the musician, and appears in the remake of the movie “Superfly”. “Architectural Digest” did a feature article on the changes made to the mansion to accommodate the movie. This included a two page spread of Alan’s iron work in the main room of the house.
- Along the way, he created a television series about blacksmithing which he produced and which won a Telly award for a special episode about architectural blacksmithing. Georgia Public Television distributed the series throughout the country and it showed in every state of the union, Canada, France, and Australia. A “This Old House” for blacksmiths, “Forge and Anvil” helped many people begin blacksmithing and remains a useful tool for anyone wishing to start.
- In 1997, a client asked him to help him give back to Haiti after 24 years of operating his business there. Alan designed a work area and production facility for around 130 people. These folks included welders and wire workers and packagers and finishers along with blacksmiths and a large product development group.Living in Haiti for 5 years, Alan would come back to Atlanta to meet with a design team and developed over 400 products for his client.
- Taking the product from an idea and sometimes a drawing, he produced prototypes that became products. Scaling up each item to a production level of hundreds and sometimes thousands of copies, he filled a 40 foot container every two weeks with handmade goods. These were not tropical designs but rather were Americana based on antiques and unique pieces found and created by the design team in Atlanta.. Clients included Neiman Marcus, Sundance, J Jill, Dean and Deluca, and Target.Instituting design and a quality control system in Haiti, Alan was able to help his client introduce around 50 new designs every six months for those five years. The designs were premiered at the Atlanta home furnishing show every six months and shown at all of the major home furnishing shows around America.
- Maintaining quality in handmade goods is never easy but at that volume it was quite a feat. This is especially true given the infrastructure problems in Haiti which have always made any sort of dependable production difficult. There was no functional legal system at the time and living was dangerous in the extreme. However, Alan came to love the country and the people deeply. He was able to indulge in his love of riding dirt bikes as his main method of transport and to establish a system of more than 40 shops all over Port au Prince and other parts of Haiti. These shops fed into a central production facility which he designed and he oversaw its construction.
- This system kept between 300 and 500 people working year round. At the time, every person with a job in Haiti was thought to feed 10 people. Thus, he was responsible for helping feed between 3000 and 5000 people every day throughout that time.This was a system that gave people the opportunity to earn their money. Rather than a handout, it was a rare opportunity for so many people and the dignity that work brings as opposed to charity was an important contribution to some of the most desperately poor people in the world.
- While this was a tremendous benefit to the country and the community in which he worked, Alan received tremendous benefits himself, as well.working with so many fine craftspeople and concentrating on developing brand new ideas all the time, increased his understanding of blacksmithing and design an infinite amount.. Eventually, Haiti became too difficult to work in and to produce from. The country descended into terrible violence which has only grown worse by the year. A horrendous earthquake flattened both the houses that he lived in and took hundreds of lives. Yet, the good that he did there and the incredible amount he was able to learn while there about the Haitian people, designing metal, stone, and woodwork, and about dirt bike riding in general was an invaluable contribution to who he became.
- Once back in Atlanta, Alan looked around for new challenges and was fortunate enough to end up teaching at the School of Building Arts in Charleston, SC for more than a year. During that time, he renovated the iron work on Washington Park which is a large park attached to the back of City Hall in Charleston SC. He also renovated other very old iron work at Ponpon Chapel of Ease and in Walterboro SC.
- Following this work, Alan took on several large iron work jobs in Atlanta and in Travelers Rest, SC. He built driveway gates, railings, personnel gates, furniture, and amassed portfolio of over 2000 pieces.In 2008, Alan decided to go back to teaching in the university and spent the next 15 years teaching history, critical thinking, and ethics in one university or another. During that time Alan and his friend George Dupree renovated a very old plot in Rose Hill Cemetery in Milledgeville, GA and he continued to design and produce pieces for his clients.
- Leaving teaching in 2023, Alan has focused on design and production of special hand forged work and has been moving his operation into a greener and more environmentally friendly mode. His hope is to go from being a blacksmith to being a greensmith and to help other people learn how to make their ironwork without coal or many of the other environmentally destructive materials and methods the classic blacksmithing relies upon.