Traditional methods and rustic living keep blacksmith Bohdan Popov's fire burning
rest of the wood and clay mazankas in the small village where he lives.
But looking closer, it’s easy to notice a mound of earth with a chimney at the far end of the garden – a smithy. And the conic silhouette of a tepee beneath the apple trees.
Upon entering the candle-lit room, with a blazing Russian stove in the middle, visitors can discern a computer in the corner and English-language books on eco-farming sitting on homemade shelves. Drums of all kinds and sizes stand on the floor.
The denizen is just as unusual as his house. After all, Popov is a combination of blacksmith, drummer and adherent of permaculture [sustainable living] all forged into one.
Popov can spend weeks in the darkness of his smithy, and then just as easily take off to go hitchhiking around Europe as he did in the mid-90s; or open a smithy in the Pyrohovo Folk Architecture Museum to teach his craft to young people; or fly to Tasmania (which he did in December 2002) to visit his teacher Bill Mollison, whom ABC Australia once called “the genius of permaculture.”
“Bohdan seems to be one of those rare people who ramble freely and happily in life, doing whatever they want,” said Benoit Lamey, a musician from France who recently met Popov.
Popov, 30, claims that his life was changed when he was 16 and a high school senior. It was then he decided to become a blacksmith.
At that time, he studied at one of Kyiv’s most prestigious high schools, scoring excellent marks in English. Despite his teachers’ admonitions, Popov decided not to enter university.
“I observed my peers preparing to make careers and felt I didn’t want any artificial planning for my life,” Popov recalled. “I wanted to do something honest and real.”
Then someone brought him to a smithy, and Popov realized that this life was for him. His teachers were Oleh Stesyuk, a master of artistic metal, and Vyacheslav Basov from Suzdal, Russia, who rediscovered the secret of damask steel.
For several years, Popov has been working in the Pyrohovo Museum. In 1996 he moved to a small village on the outskirts of Kyiv.
“I was reading more and more about the natural way of living and using renewable energy sources and decided to practice what I preached,” Popov explained.
He built his smithy according to ancient patterns.
“In the old days, the blacksmith had to cut wood, make coal himself and hammer using his hands, not with a pneumatic hammer,” Popov explained. “Often a blacksmith was also a metal maker.”
As a result, Popov’s fellow blacksmiths, who use more traditional methods, see him as a bit of an oddball.
“Of course, using my method you can’t make most things blacksmiths create these days using electric furnaces, electric welding and a pneumatic hammer,” Popov admitted. “But I’m not into mass production; I can allow myself to enjoy some small nuances [of my craft].”
Popov likes to make knives, axes and other gardening tools, plus household objects such as door handles, candlesticks and most anything else produced by a smithy in the past.
And despite his archaic methods, Popov works fast. He takes a day to make a knife or a month to make a sword. He usually refuses when someone tries to order cold steel. But he enjoys fashioning axes according to the 10th-11th century technologies of Kyivan Rus, which, he says, combine beautiful form with a maximum degree of efficiency.
He’s also a minimalist when it comes to decorations.
“I want to show the beauty of the material itself,” Popov said. “Metal has its own beauty [such as] smell, color and taste.”
Over time, Popov was astonished to find how many things in the world are related in one way or another to his vanishing craft.
Take the teepee, the home of Native Americans such as the Sioux: “A teepee is an ideal smithy,” Popov said. “It has good ventilation, is convenient to place instruments in and is easy to transport.”
Or drums: In the mid-90s, Popov was traveling around Ireland, visiting blacksmiths and offering them his help with the hammer in return for a place to stay. After a day’s work, Irish blacksmiths would take a bodhran (a Celtic drum called “thunder”) and begin to play. It was then that Popov realized the connection between work in the smithy and drumming.
“It’s the rhythm,” Popov explained. “A blacksmith’s work is like a dance – a dance around the fire.”
Popov still recalls a secret one teacher taught him; it’s a secret he believes in heart and soul.
“A smith should never be the main player,” Popov said. “He is just one of the elements, like fire, metal, the anvil and the hammer. ‘Only when you manage to achieve harmony in this atmosphere,’ Basov once said, ‘will you make a good smith.’”
