Published: October 23, 2008
ELKIN
There's a little bit of history in every tin Christmas ornament that Peter Blum III makes.
Blum uses methods handed down through several generations of his family -- Moravian tinsmiths whose work included making tin ceilings for hotels and the copper guttering at Old Salem.
"Sometimes you realize the only way you live longer is to learn each day," he said recently as he held a tool he made just for making stars and other ornaments. Some of his tools in his shop near Elkin belonged to his father and grandfather, but a good number are tools he has made himself.
Blum, 74, is a master tinsmith. He has work in the gift shops at Old Salem and Bethabara, and he is also showing at the N.C. State Fair, which runs through Sunday in Raleigh.
Blum started working with his grandfather, Peter Wilson Blum, in the family's Winston-Salem tinshop when he was 15 years old. The elder Blum put on roofing, gutters and exhaust pipe for industrial equipment, and made street lamps for Old Salem.
For 50 cents an hour, young Peter Blum was the assistant to the layout man at the shop. He got to see everything that was being made. He made well buckets, milk buckets and flue pipe for tobacco barns.
They had to keep an eye on him, he said. He would often end up making something out of scrap, such as a chandelier.
It was Blum's father, Peter Wilson Blum Jr., who ran the tinshop at Old Salem.
The younger Blum later moved to Greensboro to work but kept tinsmithing as a hobby, he said. He would make candle molds as needed, and occasionally, other decorative items.
In the early 1990s, Blum was working as a material estimator in Greensboro when he decided he wanted to raise his own son in the country. In 1992, he moved onto 70 acres near Elkin and began working full time with tin. By then, the family business in Winston-Salem had closed. And he wanted to live in a more agricultural setting, he said.
"I guess being satisfied with where you live helps you do what you love to do," he said.
People can sense that he is truly happy in his work and loves what he does, said Lauren Werner, the director of marketing at Old Salem.
There are few other tinsmiths like him in the area or the state, she said. The quality of his work is unparalleled," Werner said.
For the last 21 years, Blum has spent about 10 days each fall at the state fair doing demonstrations.
People are drawn by the design and the history of it, said Michael Kollars of Dobson, who has been working with Blum as an apprentice.
"It's an art to me … the actual making of the product," he said.
This time of year is pretty busy for Blum because of craftsman shows and the coming holiday season.
A few weeks ago, he was working on a lot of cookie cutters. Right now, he's working on a lot of Christmas ornaments.
He has to finish designing a pattern for a lantern. And he's doing a demonstration for a museum in Raleigh.
Though demonstrations and decorative tin keep him busy, he has had a lot of other interesting projects come his way.
He did the tin wear for the movie The Last of the Mohicans. And, more recently, The Patriot.
"They sent specifications from museums up and down the seaboard and said, ‘Can you make it?'" Blum said.
The challenge is to figure out how.
And part of the fun has been to figure out whether he needs to make a tool to do it, he said.
"I'm not happy unless I'm building something," Blum said. "This is just something … what all it does, to me, it's rather invigorating to do it."
■ Sherry Youngquist can be reached in Mount Airy at 336-918-6119 or at syoungquist@wsjournal.com.