Same Anvil Since 1916: The Story of Santa Barbara Forge

There's an anvil in our shop that went to work in 1916. It belonged to the Craviotto brothers, and it was already old when I was born. We still forge on it. Every trade has its heirlooms; ours weigh three hundred pounds and don't care what year it is.

The Craviottos opened their blacksmith shop here in 1916, and for eighty years they were the sound of iron in this town. Railings, gates, ornamental work, custom barbecue grills. Walk Santa Barbara with your eyes up and you'll still find their work holding buildings together, quietly outliving the people who made it. That's the whole job, really. Make the thing so well it forgets it needed you.

The Quiet Years

By the mid-nineties the brothers had earned their rest, and the shop went silent. It stood that way for about fifteen years. A forge without fire is a strange thing to walk through. All the tools still hanging there, patient, like the work might resume any minute.

Taking Up the Hammer

In 2010 we got the chance to bring it back. Before we lit anything, we sat down with the Craviotto family. They gave us their blessing to carry the craft forward, and I don't use the word lightly. It was a passing of the torch, and torches are easy to drop. We understood what we were being handed: not just a building full of tools, but a standard.

We started where they left off: architectural ironwork, gates, railings, custom pieces. Over the years the work grew into furniture, and eventually into cookware. The Sonora pans came from a simple thought that wouldn't leave me alone: most of what we forge is beautiful and stays put. I wanted to make something beautiful that gets used hard, every day, by people who'll never visit the shop. A pan earns its keep at every meal. There's an honesty in that I like.

Craft in the Modern Age

Blacksmithing asks for patience, skill, and a long acquaintance with fire. Most of the world has moved on to things made to be replaced. We haven't. Every gate and railing that leaves this shop carries the mark of the hands that made it, and our steel pans are held to the same standard: shaped from solid carbon steel in our shop, hand-forged handles, finished one at a time, built to be argued over in somebody's will.

The techniques are centuries old. The thinking isn't frozen. We keep refining the process and testing new designs. Tradition isn't a museum. It's a working shop.

A New Home, the Same Fire

We've since moved to a bigger shop that fits what the operation has become. People sometimes ask if leaving the old building broke the thread. It didn't. The legacy was never the walls. It's the standard, the craft, and yes, the anvil, which made the move with us and never missed a day of work. 1916 to now, same anvil, same argument with the same stubborn metal.

Every time we light the forge we're answering the same bell the Craviottos answered. We intend to keep answering it, and to hand it on in better shape than we found it.