Honest Material
We buy certified mill steel from three foundries we've worked with for over a decade. No mystery alloys, no offshore plate, no plated carbon. The metal's chemistry is printed on the spec sheet you receive with every commission.
The Forge · Est. 2007
The workshop where fire meets steel & every weld tells a story.
Sixteen years of hand-forged metalcraft, built one piece at a time in a converted railway workshop. No factories. No shortcuts. Just hammer, hearth, and the stubborn belief that objects should outlive the people who made them.
Our Story
Built in a railway shed. Lit by coal fire. Refusing to scale.
Lantern Forge began in 2007 when Eitan Marlow quit his architectural career to chase a single idea: that metal, shaped by hand, could carry the same warmth as wood and the same stubbornness as stone.
He bought a 1908 railway maintenance shed on the edge of town, dragged in a 400-pound coal-fired forge from a defunct Pennsylvania blacksmith, and started teaching himself the old European techniques — fold-forming, Damascus pattern-welding, repoussé — that no factory line could ever replicate.
Sixteen years later, the workshop still has the same dirt floor, the same coal forge, and a roster of four artisans who treat every commission like a piece of architecture. We've shipped work to forty-one countries, restored a 1783 iron gate for a Tuscan villa, and turned down every offer to franchise.
The Philosophy
Four rules we break nothing for.
Every workshop ends up with a creed — some written, some just worn into the floor. Ours sits above the anvil, hand-painted on reclaimed barn oak. It's the standard we hold every piece to before it leaves the building.
Read the journal-
I
Heat it, don't melt it.
Steel has a memory. We work it within 200°F of its critical temperature so it keeps the grain we want. Anything hotter is a shortcut — and the metal remembers shortcuts for decades.
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II
Mark every joint by hand.
Where two pieces meet, our blacksmiths file a maker's mark. It's a small thing, but it forces every hand on the piece to know where every other hand has been.
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III
Refuse the rush order.
A forged piece should outlast its owner. A two-week deadline produces a two-week piece. We've walked away from six-figure commissions to protect the work — and we will again.
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IV
Train the next hand.
We take one apprentice every other year, three-year tenure, paid from day one. The trade dies if it isn't handed down. That is not a metaphor; it is a literal emergency.
What We Believe
Three things we won't compromise.
Plenty of shops can bend steel. What separates a piece you keep from one you return is invisible until you live with it. These are the things we obsess over.
Work That Outlasts
Every piece comes with a 100-year structural guarantee. We've stood behind that promise for sixteen years and counting — restoring, on the house, pieces that have been hit by cars, moved across oceans, and buried in a 2018 garage fire.
Slow on Purpose
Our smallest commission — a single fireplace poker — takes 14 hours. A signature gate runs nine months. We design timelines to match the work, not the calendar, and tell every client up front. Patience is the price of heirloom.
The Workshop · By the numbers
Sixteen years, one shed, no shortcuts.
1,847
Pieces forged
Each signed and numbered
41
Countries shipped
From Norway to New Zealand
9 mo.
Avg. lead time
From sketch to install
100 yr.
Structural guarantee
On every commission
The Handcrafted Process
From sketch to steel, in four honest stages.
Nothing in the workshop is automated. The path from your first phone call to the day a crate lands on your doorstep is long, deliberate, and full of decisions we won't make for you without asking.
i.
Sketch & Conversation
We start with a two-hour conversation, in person or by call, about how the piece will be lived with. From that, Eitan draws three concept sketches by hand — no CAD, no renders. You pick the direction; we refine.
ii.
Full-Scale Maquette
We build a 1:1 cardboard and wire template of the piece — yes, even for a small fireplace tool. You walk around it, mark it up, and we translate. A maquette catches every proportion error before steel enters the equation.
iii.
Forge, Join, Finish
The coal forge runs four days a week. Each artisan owns their section of the build, hot-rolling, fold-forming, forge-welding, and finishing. Mid-build, we send weekly photos so you watch the piece arrive.
iv.
Crated & Delivered
Final pieces spend a week in a climate room to settle. We hand-crate in our shop — wool blankets, foam-lined steel frame, custom skid — and white-glove deliver within 500 miles. Beyond that, we ship insured with our install team on call.
The Craftsman
From the founder
I spent six years as an architect drawing buildings I would never set foot inside. The day I picked up a hammer instead of a pencil, I understood what I'd been missing — the moment a piece of steel tells you, in the first three strikes, exactly what it wants to become.— Eitan Marlow · Founder & Master Smith
The Hands
Four artisans, one forge, no titles.
We don't use the word "employee." Everyone who works the steel here is a co-owner of the workshop and signs every piece that leaves it. Meet the hands behind the hammers.
Eitan Marlow
Founder · Master SmithTrained in Vienna and Kyoto. Holds patents on three forge-welding techniques. Has not missed a Friday at the coal forge since 2009.
Damascus Fold-forming RepousséSaoirse O'Halloran
Co-owner · Architectural LeadFormer structural engineer. Designs every gate, stair, and railing the shop produces. Insists on full-scale maquettes for every project over four feet.
Gates Stairs EngineeringDimitri Kovač
Co-owner · Finish & PatinaTrained in conservation at the British Museum. Spends four days a week on patina, bluing, and wax finishes. Owns the only microscope in the shop.
Patina Restoration BluingRuth Anaya
Apprentice · Class of '24Our current apprentice, on a three-year tenure. Studied sculpture at RISD. Will finish as a co-owner in 2027 and lead the shop's first lighting line.
Lighting Sculpture Hot-punching
Visit the Workshop
The forge is open by appointment. Come see the coal fire for yourself.
Tours run every other Saturday morning. We walk you through the workshop, explain what's on the bench, and answer the questions only hands-on visitors ever think to ask. Bring coffee. Stay an hour.