It’s been a while since I’ve done a post about the trip to Abilene. Obviously from the title of my post I’ve chosen to talk about the blacksmith.
I’ve read plenty of historical romances where a blacksmith played a part. Some made swords and armor. Some shoed horses and made wagons, others made wrought iron gates and tools.
Out on the western frontier a blacksmith was just as important, if not more so, than a sawmill. I won’t go into the whole forging process etc, etc. I need to do a little more research. But I did find something interesting about the construction of the of the blacksmith building, something I had never even thought about.
Take a look at this original structure. I purposely had Little Annie Oakley pose in front of the window. Annie is kind of on the short side and she is standing a several inches in front of the window, which means the window is closer to the ground than it may appear. All the windows of the blacksmith buidling were close to the ground.
Now I know this isn’t a grand discovery and it’s not like I’ll ever describe how low to the ground the windows are. Call me a geek if you will, but hey, I thought it was so very cool.
4 responses to “The Blacksmith”
It is cool. It's all those little things that make stories come to life in your head, and so make it come to life for your readers. And smart move putting her in the picture for perspective.
That is interesting detail. Of course, those of us with an interest in writing historical romance find historic details interesting to tuck away for some day in some novel! LOL Do you know why the windows were close to the ground? You made me curious and I started a brief internet search, but didn't really find the answer. I had to cut myself off. LOL My closest guess is it had something to do with heating and cooling of the building being more efficient with keeping the windows low. Maybe. I thought this site was interesting for details of design in historic buildings for heating and cooling: http://www.nps.gov/hps/tps/briefs/brief03.htm
Did you find out why the windows were so low?
Sure, Alice. Well, kind of. See the next post.