Founded in Detroit, Michigan in 2012 by Amy Weiks and Gabriel Craig, Smith Shop’s collaborative process utilizes the talents of two senior partners along with a committed group of talented metalsmiths and apprentices. Smith Shop has benefited from the talents of numerous employees, journeymen, apprentices, and interns over the years. With a major deficiency in the United States for the training of new blacksmiths, Smith Shop frequently trains eager pupils to answer the call to service of this demanding profession. Smith Shop is proud of their record of mentorship and tutelage through their internship and apprentice programs, having intensely trained more than 30 young smiths. Having a great excess of demand for our services, we are nearly always hiring and taking new interns on a rolling basis.
Gabriel Craig
Co-Owner, Metalsmith
Gabriel has been a metalsmith for 23 years, starting his career as a jeweler and gradually becoming interested in larger and more varied metalworking techniques. In graduate school Gabriel studied architectural history, a passion that would guide his career. Since devoting himself to blacksmithing in 2010, his work has focused on decorative and functional ironwork. With the spirit of an ornamentalist, Gabriel’s work finds inspiration in carved decoration from the gothic and gothic revival eras. More recently, he has been investigating English Georgian ironwork forms after study in England.
Gabriel is an active writer and architectural historian and is recognized internationally among his peers as an historic ironwork expert. He has lectured extensively on the subject and is currently at work on a book about ironwork in his native Detroit. In addition to his scholarship, he is also the president of the Historic Blacksmith Conservancy, a non-profit organization that promotes education in traditional ironwork. Through his work with the HBC he has helped to preserve the Samuel Yellin Tool Collection and create immersive programming to educate his peers about historic ironwork. Their 2nd Biennial Symposium will be held in New York City in the fall of 2026.
Gabriel received his BFA in Metals/ Jewelry from Western Michigan University in 2006, and his MFA in Jewelry and Metalworking from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2009.
Amy Weiks
Co-Owner, Metalsmith
In 2004 Amy discovered metalsmithing and never looked back. Like her earlier career in photography and printmaking, metalsmithing is steeped in technical processes, but working in metal allowed her to move into three-dimensions—creating new opportunities to explore volume, form, and function. Amy excels at appropriating reductive utilitarian forms and imagining them in new lyrical and poetic schemes. That is to say, she can distill the essence of archetypal forms and infuse them with new beauty and creativity. Her innate sense of form and composition, her sensitivity to line quality, and deft skill with a hammer are the defining hallmarks of her work. Amy has shown her artwork nationally and internationally and it resides in public and private collections throughout the United States.
After years of observing historic ironwork and the high fidelity achieved in laminated wrought iron, Amy set out to source a more suitable material for artistic and ornamental forging than the widely available mild steel products in the United States. Years of research and supply chain investigation led Amy to co-found Heritage Iron Company— a supplier of low carbon steel for use in traditional and artistic forgework.
Amy received her BFA from Western Michigan University in 2004, and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2012.
Samuel Patmon
Apprentice Metalsmith
After careers in logistics and HVAC, Sam found his passion in metalworking. Inspired by the challenge of making architectural metalwork, Sam joined Smith Shop in 2024 as an apprentice. Since taking up blacksmithing he has become proficient at the forge and now regularly teaches classes and travels to participate in demonstrations. Sam also has a strong interest in machining. He is a member of the Michigan Artist Blacksmith’s Association and has been an assistant in the iron studio at the Penland School of Crafts. His thirst for knowledge and enthusiasm for blacksmithing is contagious.
