Humans do a lot with their hands. And over the past week, we've been hearing stories about Arkansas craftspeople who were at the Folklife Festival in North Little Rock last month. We've been meeting people who can do a whole lot with just a little. We learned about quilters from Pocahontas and brew makers from Stone County. Next, we'll meet a man who has taken the craft tradition of blacksmithing to another level. Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis spoke with the legendary bladesman Jerry Fisk at the festival last month, and Jack brings us this report.
Ask Jerry Fisk how he got into making blades and you might get a story.
"I'm dadgum old, I'm so old, local legend says I was born with a Bowie knife in my hand. I cut my own birth cord, sold the knife to the doctor and drove my mother home. Not all that is true, though."
Fisk is a native of Nashville, Arkansas, and in 1999, he was dubbed a National Living Treasure by the University of North Carolina. And then, 20 years later, the state named him Honorary Arkansas Living Treasure for his skilled work as a blacksmith, making knives and swords. He was at the Arkansas Folklife Festival last month, showing folks how he makes the blades he's famous for. Which might be slow going, but it's anything but dull.
"I'll forge them, and then when I get a little tired from hammering, I start filing on one. And so people can sit and watch a little bit at a time. It's not a very fast process. So you got to take your dinner bucket when you want to go watch."
You want to watch and listen because Fisk can spin a yarn just as well as he can craft a blade. His knives have stories, too. Many are made from historic materials.
"For instance, I've got wood from the tree where Doctor Mudd treated John Wilkes Booth. I've got wood from inside the walls of the Alamo. I've got steel going as far back as the second century that I can put in. I've got meteorites. I've got a railroad spike from the crossing where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil so he could play the blues. I've got musical, I've got medical. Whatever field you're from, I'm going to have some steel or materials from that."
Travis: How do you get this stuff?
"Just kind of keep an eye on the newspapers and magazines, if we see there's maybe something coming up. My wife, she'll start calling. A lot of times they won't sell it to you at all, but we have found if you donate enough money to their cause, they'll give it to you. There's always another way around."
He's got a book with some of the pieces he's created. It's maybe a few inches thick. There are also a few on display at his booth.
"Now there's a little round dot in the steel. It's a Damascus. It has probably just 200 layers, but there's a little round dot. What that dot is is actually a nail where I drill through the blade and then forge-welded that nail in there. But that nail is from the shop of James Black, who made the original Bowie for Jim Bowie, along with a friend. We owned that original property, where he made the knife, and there's not been anything on it since Black made knives. There's been no homes, no, nothing. It's just been either pasture or timberland. Pretty much what we find we know did come from James.
But after James Black allegedly smithed that legendary Bowie knife for Jim Bowie in Washington, Arkansas, in 1832, tragedy certainly followed him.
"You see, James Black making that knife for Jim Bowie, it was a terrible little thing. He grew up as a mercury plater, a silver plater, and he used mercury. So years later, he marries his wife against her father's wishes. And she ups and dies during childbirth. The old man still just hated him, so he caught him asleep one night and went in there and beat him bad enough that he went blind. He would have went blind anyway, he just hurried it up. So James Black, being blind now, he goes to Philadelphia because he heard there was a doctor up there that could treat it. So while he was up there, the father-in-law sold all of his materials, his property, all of his equipment that he had. Sold it all, set it afire, took his kids and moved to Texas. He never saw his children again. And then he comes back home and, trying to remember how he made the knife, the actual process, went insane. They had to chain him in a room. And so it was a real sad thing. And everybody associated with that original Bowie, died a violent death, everybody."
For Fisk, legends and blacksmithing go hand in hand. You can go to jerryfisk.com for images of his work and more on the man himself.
Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis reporting on blacksmith Jerry Fisk at the Arkansas Folklife Festival. His interviews were recorded last month at the event in North Little Rock. Tune in tomorrow to hear Jack's last recap about the sounds of the weekend.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
