Beloved hammers

Making friends... with hammers!

Pennsic festival is the kind of place where one forgets modern life and gains much more: new friends with similar passions. Keen on making friends both with our customers and those who share our love of traditional manufacturing, this time we did it an unusual way.

To make medieval armour our smiths use a wide variety of farrier’s tools, and with a preference for cold forging, the hammer is most important among them. The hammers marked with an etched ArmStreet logo belong to one of our leading craftsmen - Alex AKA Yorik – who you’re probably already familiar with as he makes frequent appearances in our photo sessions. There’s a reason we brought these hammers with us: in ancient heathen times a reciprocal gift of smiths’ hammers could signify the beginning of ongoing fellowship and deep mutual respect for each other's work. It is similar to the sacred rites of brotherhood and friendship, such as an exchange of swords or drinking from the same jug. Who’d have ever thought we’d meet Daniel Kretchmar, a great blacksmith from Irontree Works, right there!

As rightly observed by Daniel, no smith can work without good tools. The basic set includes three hammers: the large, the small, and... the favorite one! It was the third, beloved hammer we decided to gift. Igor Solunsky, our US branch head and long-standing friend of ours, decided to take up an exchange of the Yorick's hammer for the hammer of Irontree Works. We trust that the ArmStreet's favorite, imbued with luck and medieval vibes took its rightful place in Daniel’s collection and now helps to produce unique items.

The pictures below show the gifting, and a brand-new hammer with a yellow mark at the end of the handle - right in our workshop. We hope it will serve us with faith and truth, and that the next festival will draw us together with many other creative folks!