Blasts from the bloomery: 248 issues of ANVIL Magazine!

by Rob Edwards

Published in the March 2001 Issue of Anvil Magazine

With this issue of ANVIL Magazine, we celebrate 25 years of publishing the "secrets to life" for farriers and blacksmiths.

As The Voice of the Farrier and Blacksmith, we have had the privilege, the responsibility, and sometimes even the anguish of maintaining the high journalistic integrity that farriers and blacksmiths have come to expect.

It's been fun, educational, and sometimes stressful-but never uneventful! ANVIL Magazine now has subscribers in over 40 countries on five continents. And actually, we've heard reports of copies of the magazine being whisked away by aliens who landed somewhere in the midwest; no doubt, they will be carrying our message to other solar systems!

It has been quite exciting for us here at the ANVIL Magazine office, to be a part of the resurgence of farriery and blacksmithing. We have been fortunate to meet some of the most interesting and fascinating people in each field-or anywhere else, for that matter.

It's always been frustrating for me personally to have the wonderful information that we have been able to print end up in personal libraries and therefore, not readily available to non-subscribers or entry-level people. And then along came the Internet... Now, through the marvelous technology that has become available to all of us, the "secrets to life" can now be shared on a continuous basis for all the world to see. We have been online for five years and anvilmag.com now has the last 20 months of complete back issues online. You will also find there many previous articles, interviews, and tributes, making ANVIL Magazine and anvilmag.com the blacksmith's and farrier's most valuable resource. Our Web site is visited by an average of 400 interested people each day.

We feel that ANVIL Magazine has been an accurate reflection of the growth in quality of workmanship of contemporary blacksmiths and farriers. It has indeed been our privilege to dispel the often-repeated rumor that blacksmithing and farriery are dying professions, and we will continue to strive to assure our readers that, through our pages, they are indeed alive and well.

We'd like to express our sincere gratitude to all our loyal subscribers and advertisers, who have made the last 25 years of ANVIL Magazine possible.

So here's to the next 25 years...

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