Aesthetica Roland C. Greefkes

Welcome to the Aesthetica - Roland C. Greefkes web site.

Aesthetica was founded in 1928 in Amsterdam, Holland, by my grandparents and represents three generations of Dutch blacksmiths. Even though I also have had success in other artistic pursuits, I now follow in my father's footsteps down to wearing wooden shoes in the workshop.
I approach my work as an art form inspired by each individual client, and all my work is hand forged in a coal-fired forge, with the traditional attention to detail that marks old world craftsmanship.

I was born above my father's smithy in Holland, just down the street from the Peace Palace in The Hague, and throughout my childhood I awoke each morning to the ringing of the anvil in the workshop below me. I absorbed the craft that my father inherited from his father, long before I was old enough to become his apprentice. Though my father, Cornelis Greefkes, was the foremost wrought iron art smith of the Netherlands during the Post World War II period, I came to the craft on my own accord; during my early apprenticeship, my father wrote with chalk on the hood of the forge that "If a son follows too closely in his father's footsteps, he may lose his own way." This insight liberated me from the obvious, and allowed me to study chemistry at the University of Toronto and travel the world for many years, before I settled down to my rustic forge in the Catskill hills of upstate New York.

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