nf Pen land Line
A Game from the Past
A. sense of play has always been part of Penland, but
there’s only one Penland program which began with a
game. Not a game in some psychological or symbolic
sense, but an actual game. It was croquet, played in
white clothes with steel balls, sledge hammers, and
forged wickets, and it led directly to the building of
the Penland iron studio.
The first smithing at Penland, however, happened
ten years before the game. Sometime in the late
1960s Brent Kington, who would later head the
famous iron program at University of Southern
Illinois at Carbondale, was teaching jewelry at
Penland. He had an interest in blacksmithing and had
made friends with Alex Bealer, who wrote an impor
tant book on iron work.
Alex and Brent
got together at
Penland with
Daniel Boone IV
(direct descen-
dent), an excellent
blacksmith who
lived in nearby
Burnsville. They
borrowed an anvil
from Gunter’s
Machine Shop in
Spruce Pine (the
anvil is still on
loan to Penland),
and set up two
hand-cranked
forges in a low
shed that housed
the salt kiln (it was
just behind the Lily Loom House). Bill Brown Jr., who was a
boy at the time, remembers that the roof was so low that you
couldn’t raise a hammer over your head. They had to put the
anvil just outside the shed. This makeshift setup was used
from time, to time, but it didn’t result in any sustained inter
est in iron at Penland. ‘
It did gerve to spark Bill’s interest in ironwork, however,
and he eventually served an apprenticeship with a blacksmith
in Atlanta and returned to Penland as' a Resident. He built a
blacksmithing shop in what is now called the Bascombe
Annex (it's used for housing these days). As soon as he
returned to Penland he began to pressure his father (former
director, the late Bill Brown) to build an iron studio and add
this craft to the Penland
program. But his father
said that he wouldn’t
build a studio until he
saw proof of sufficient
interest.
In 1979, Bill (Jr.)
got Jim Wallace, now
the director of the
National Ornamental
Metals Museum, to do
some weekend smithing
workshops at Penland,
and he asked Jim to help Some ojthe wickets.
The crowd in white.
him come up with a
dramatic gesture.
Their idea was to
concoct an event that
would get lots of
people forging. “We
needed to find some
thing that could be
easily made by any
one and didn’t have
to look like any
thing—something
that could be made
simply and quickly,”
j I Bill remembers.
“That’pihow we came up with the croquet wicket. The idea
was tb have a big croquet game, but in order to play you had
to forge a wicket.”
Jim Wallace working at the outdoor Jorge.
, Penland Blacksmith's Croquet 1979
! j Smith's Croquet Local Rules
Dress Cpc^e:
PlayersWhites required. Safety Gear Recommended
Caddies;I Approval of Umpire
Behaviour Code:
A. All beverages consumed during play must be held by a
caddy.
B. It is I rude to whoop and/or dance while a player is
attemptirjg a shot.
C. Spitting is discouraged but not expressly prohibited.
D. Tripping over wickets is considered highly awkward and
is discpiiraged.
I
Rules: I
1. A player who loses his ball(s) is disqualified.
2. Loss bf mallet is decadent and will not be tolerated.
3. A player who strikes his own body while attempting to
shoot loses one turn.
4. Striking an opponent with either mallet or ball is
prohibited.
5. Wicket movement is prohibited at all times.
6. Players cannoning other player's ball(s) are
responsible for damages.
7. Penailties may be assessed for playing the wrong ball.
8. Striking the umpire is considered breach of etiquette.
Player loses one turn.
9. All decisions of the umpire are law. Challenging the
umpire will not be tolerated. Penalty: Death.
10. Any struck ball which is determined to have gone more
than 12 inches off the ground is considered a dangerous
play. Penalty: Gain one turn.
Some (J the rules (we don’t have roomJor all of them).
j AN OVERWHELMING RESPONSE
The! response was overwhelming. “We had a tremendous
crowd out there,” Bill said. “People were getting burned and
there were two or three on one
anvil; the whole thing was just
bizarre. But it got a hell of a
crowd.” The forging went on for
three or four days and at the end
there were so many elaborate iron
wickets they had to double them up
on the lawn.
Somewhere in the middle of all
this. Bill and Jim realized that they
didn’t know anything about cro
quet. Naturally, a hitchhiking
Englishman showed up about that
time and he was drafted to write
Bill Brown Jr., assisted by his caddy.
the rules and serve as referee. He took up the challenge and
required everyone to wear white and travel with a caddy (to
carry drinks, of course).
The iron balls (which were industrial surplus) were the
size and weight of small cannonballs. Bill Helwig’s metals class
painted them each with a different design. For mallets they
used sledge hammers and Lenore Davis’s surface design stu
dents made banners to decorate the course.
The game
took place on
Sunday after
noon on the
lawn between
the Pines and
the Dye Shed.
The extremely
creative rules
were enforced
by the English
referee, backed
by a Trappist
monk (a stu
dent) who
wore his robe
and hood and
carried an axe.
“He was the executioner—in case there were penalties,” Bill
explained.
“The whole school turned out. It was a huge festivity, and
when it was over. Dad couldn’t deny that the interest was
there. Of course then he said, ‘OK, we’ll do it, but you have
to build it.’” So Bill and the school maintenance staff spent
that winter adding a shed roof to the back of Penland’s old
sculpture studio and building coal forges from sheet steel.The
next summer (1980) the first classes were held and Brent
Kington was one of the first instructors.
While the larger outcome of the croquet game is well
known, nobody is
sure how the game
actually came out.
Glass artist Mark
Peiser claims to
have won—by attri
tion if nothing
else—but his status
as victor was vigor
ously denied by Bill
Helwig. “He didn’t
win,” Bill said, “He
was just ahead
when we broke for
dinner.”
jean McLaughlin
and 1 had a great
time visiting Bill
Brown to hear this
story and look at the
artijacts (he still has most of the balls and wickets). When wejinished
talking, Jean went into Bills office to return an earlier phone call—
it turned out to be conjirmation oJ a major Joundation grant in sup
port ojPenland’s new iron studio (see next page).
—Robin Dreyer; most photos by Bill Brown,Jr.
A student in one oJPenland’sjirst iron classes.