Charles Fletcher Coddington and Debra Feiner-Coddington in their Millbrook showroom.

As Debra Feiner-Coddington and her husband Charles Fletcher Coddington point out, blacksmiths are a dedicated bunch.  "Blacksmiths have a healthy dose of arrogance," says Feiner-Coddington.  "It's a demanding craft.  It's filthy, it's hot, it's heavy."

"It's sharp," Coddington adds.

"Nobody stays in it if they don't like it," Feiner-Coddington concludes.

But for this couple, who have run Arrowsmith Forge in Millbrook for more than two decades, there is no other life.  "It's the closest thing to an alchemist there is," says Feiner-Coddington.

Coddington, who is known as Fletcher, agrees.  "A blacksmith is the only craftsman that makes his own tools.  You make a tool to make a tool to make a tool to make a thing."

Handmade hen lamp from Arrowsmith Forge.

Arrowsmith Forge, which was originally started in a small blacksmith's shop in the front yard of the couple's nearby home, and which now is contained in a 15,000-square-foot factory, makes numerous things.  There are the tables and lamps the company produces for large accounts such as high-end furniture retailers Brunschwig & Fils and Pierre Doux.  There are the chandeliers, lamps, beds, and tables the company custom-makes or sells out of its on-site showroom.  And then there are the more unusual items, like the enormous gate, adorned with copper roses, created for a neighboring farm.  Or the circa-1807 telescope, recovered among debris in one of the World Trade Center plaza buildings following the September 11 attacks, which Coddington is in the process of restoring.

"If you have design considerations, we can make them into a reality," Coddington explains.  Coddington, who grew up in Millbrook and who is a certified welder and machinist, as well as a blacksmith, likes to say that he found his way to the craft because "I'm not smart."  The truth is, he is profoundly dyslexic and found his way to crafts as an alternative to more traditional studies.  "I was very involved with my hands because of that," he notes.  "I did stonework, metalwork, ceramics, I blew glass."  For one high school project, he made a shirt from scratch, doing everything from starting with growing the flax to pounding it into cloth to the final dyeing and sewing.

After studying silversmithing in art school, he began to make the tools he needed himself, then decided to enter the blacksmith trade.  "Any blacksmith I talked to said, don't do it, you'll starve," he recalls.  Still, he prevailed, and eventually met his wife at a blacksmithing conference in Westchester 26 years ago.

"My background's very different," Feiner-Coddington, who grew up in the Bronx and Manhattan, points out.  "I went to the High School of Music and Art, and Hunter College, and danced when I was in the city."  One uncle, a dental technician, told her that she was good with her hands and "should do something with them," so she began to make jewelry.  She studied with the Craft Student's League and at the New School, eventually making larger pieces that then led her to blacksmithing, which she was studying in Vermont when she met Coddington.

At one point the company had 26 employees; it's now down to about five, but that doesn't necessarily mean business is bad.  "Bigger's not always better," Feiner-Coddington notes.  In fact, in the past three or four years, Arrowsmith Forge has been focusing less on production work for outside contracts and more on its own custom pieces, working directly with architects and designers as well as with individual clients.  "You have to be careful what you wish for because you might get it," Feiner-Coddington explains with a laugh.  "The business was doing well, but we were hating it.  We wanted to shift back into our roots, the custom work and more artistic work."

The change came sooner than they anticipated.  After September 11, the bottom dropped out of the larger production market and the pair found that they had to make adjustments.  "We had to shift gears quickly," Feiner-Coddington recalls.  "It was like shifting the Exxon Valdez.  We kept thinking, where the hell's the rudder?"

But word of mouth has spread quickly, leading to new accounts and new exposure.  Arrowsmith Forge will be featured in December on "The Genuine Article," a cable network show hosted by Gordon Elliott, whose wife commissioned a chandelier from the company.  And there might always be another enormous gate.  "Clients would say, 'Can you?'  'Would you?'  We used to say no, but now we'd say yes," Coddington says.

Still, success doesn't come without a price.  "When we were doing production, we had a life, but in the process of turning the business around, now we have no life," Feiner-Coddington adds.  "It feels like if we continue to move in this direction, we can get our life back.  It's a good thing we like doing what we do, 'cuz it's been brutal."

Arrowsmith Forge is located on 3788 Route 44 in Millbrook.  For more information, call (845) 677-5687, or visit www.arrowsmithforge.com.