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With spring setting in temperatures have been on the rise, but Not Putnam is used to the heat. He spends most of his days sweating over 2,000 degree flames in his Huntly forge.
Rappahannock’s renowned blacksmith has been hammering away at hot steel for 35 years, crafting ornate gates, stairway rails and, more recently, abstract sculptures.
Putnam says that working with metal is in his blood— his great, great grandfather was a blacksmith and a carriage maker, and his great grandfather and his grandfather were both engineers. But for him, it took nearly 40 years to find his way to the craft.
Putnam was bom in Boston and raised on a farm in rural Connecticut His family lived off the land, growing vegetables and tending to cows, chickens and geese.
Unknowingly he was immersed in an artistic community from a young age. He played with the children of sculptor Alexander Calder, who wee friends with his mother, Putnam said.
It wasn’t until he was older that he realized who the family friend was.
A poster of one of Calder’s sculptures hangs in Putnam’s studio, but modestly he claims not to aspire to the artist’s greatness.
“Am I trying to compare myself to Calder? No way," he said.
Putnam split up his college education with a few years of military service. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in modem European history and went on to head the history department at a now-defunct school for boys in Massachusetts. He spent 14 years there as grteacher.
In that time he also ran a program that placed Native American students in New England schools.
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