Chris Doherty

Chris got hooked on blacksmithing after taking a class at Brookfield Craft Center in the 1990s, when instructors still dragged a forge and anvil out onto the lawn — he even ended up on local TV news quenching a coal rake for no particular reason. From there he learned through classes, regular practice, blacksmithing group meetings, books, and a summer assistantship at Peter’s Valley. He’s since become deeply woven into BCC itself: supervising Open Forge nights, building up the forge facility, recruiting faculty, teaching, serving on committees, curating exhibitions, and generally sweeping the shop a lot — work the New York Times recognized in a piece on him becoming a “21st Century Blacksmith.”

As for why he does it, Chris jokes that between the fame, adoring women, and restaurant tables, it’s hard to say — but really it comes down to the itch to make something out of nothing with fire and heavy hammers. He loves the physical poetry of the craft: the look of a new steel bar, the stress lines that form when bending it red-hot, the smell of coal, the ring of the hammer, and the moment sunlight catches a polished blade. He’s skeptical of pretentious artist statements full of jargon, preferring plain honesty about what draws him to the work.

For Chris, the most challenging piece is always the next one — the one he hasn’t figured out yet. And what matters most to him about sharing his work is simple: it’s satisfying when people find it useful or beautiful, when they’re too polite to mention the flaws, and especially when a piece has something to say and people actually pick up on it.

I bought a used floor loom and taught myself from there, building on those early lessons with Christine and deepening my skills through the Handweavers’ Guild of Connecticut. Before long, a small Nashville clothing company reached out asking me to weave fabric for them, and my profession took off from there. I’m part of an active community of floor loom weavers making fabric for wearable garments like high-quality shawls, and I find deep satisfaction knowing someone out in the world is wearing something made from cloth I wove. I love the technical side of weaving — translating an image in my mind into an architectural structure of yarn — and I hold a Shaker-inspired view that beauty should serve utility, which is why I see myself more as a craftsperson than an artist.

I’ve come full circle, now teaching Rigid Heddle and Floor Loom classes back at Brookfield, and I’m continually surprised by how much satisfaction teaching brings me — especially that moment when a student’s inhibitions fall away and the process suddenly clicks. I’ve also developed my own take on a weave called deflected double weave for a scarf collection, which was gaining real momentum through the American Craft Council’s Emerging Artists program before the pandemic cut the 2020 show season short. Beyond the craft itself, I care deeply about weaving sustainably — sourcing ethical yarns, avoiding synthetics, and making pieces built to be used and to last, in keeping with a tradition of cloth-making that stretches back thousands of years.