“Strike it while it’s hot” speaks to the limited amount of time that a blacksmith has to bend, shape, and hammer pieces of heated metal. The artists of the family-run blacksmith shop, Mountain Forge, have spent the past 46 years striking red-hot metals until sparks fly and metal transforms, quickly and precisely wielding tools and materials to create pieces of functional art.
Mountain Forge recently struck on something even bigger than the largest hunks of metal in the shop — a public art sculpture for San Francisco’s newly constructed 535 Mission skyscraper, commissioned by building owner Boston Properties. After two years of planning, designing, and forging, The Band was just installed in early November and features four individual, 13-foot-tall musician sculptures made from silicon bronze, stainless steel, cartridge brass, and copper.
Brothers Toni and Hansi Standteiner took over the Truckee-based Mountain Forge business from their father, Hans, in 2004. A longtime Squaw Valley family and Tahoe’s resident blacksmiths, the Standteiners were commissioned to do most of the metal work in the area, including Squaw Valley landmarks like the fences surrounding High Camp and the fire pits and signs at Le Chamois. They’re also responsible for the Alpine Meadows sign on Hwy 89, the sculpture at the Truckee Tahoe Airport, and Shane McConkey’s eagle at the top of KT-22’s Eagle’s Nest.
Most of Mountain Forge’s blacksmithing, however, is crafted for private homes around Tahoe/Truckee. From decorative railings to fireplace screens to accent pieces, the company is often commissioned to do all the metal work in an entire home, carefully crafting each piece by hand. Having art in homes around the lake, however, can be bittersweet for the artists. “You often don’t ever see it again, but when old houses sell, you can say, ‘Oh, my dad did this,’” said Hansi.
A Skiing Family
Despite their trade, the Standteiners define themselves as skiers with a blacksmith hobby. Originally from Austria, Hans has been skiing for 76 years. After falling in love with the Sierra while coaching the Chilean Alpine Ski Team during the 1960 Olympics, Hans moved his family to California in 1968 and took a job directing Sugar Bowl’s ski school. That same year he opened his original blacksmith shop, Forge and Anvil, in Tahoe City on the Truckee River.
Twenty years later, while running the ever-busy blacksmith shop as well as Squaw’s ski school, Hans decided to focus on the blacksmith trade. Years of practice and a natural artistic eye led to continued success, and Forge and Anvil moved to Truckee in 2004 and renamed itself Mountain Forge. With over 6,000 square feet of workshop space, Toni and Hansi have since greatly expanded the business.
Lined with flags from its apprentices that come to study from all over the world, the Mountain Forge workshop resembles an art studio — a really loud, machinery-stocked, homemade tool-laden art studio flooded with history. A 100-ton press used to make tanks in WWII sits in the front of the workshop. The walls and surfaces are lined with huge, burly power hammers that date back decades, all of which have names and their birth dates written on them. The strong, fast hammer is named “Be Here Now,” and was born on July 29, 1913. A heavy-looking hammer is called “Ernst” after the German word ernst, which means “serious.”
Forging a Mark
Mountain Forge left a piece of Tahoe in San Francisco with its most recent public art installation, The Band. The project was Toni Standteiner’s brainchild and his first major public art piece. Crafted to be housed in a new, all-glass skyscraper next to the new Transbay bus terminal in the South Market District, The Band is designed to give the building “movement and life,” according to Toni. He combined contrasting metals in each musician’s design to add more dimension to the sculptures, giving the stainless steel female singer a head of bronze hair, for example.
One of the shop’s most recognized local pieces is Shane McConkey’s eagle at the top of Eagle’s Nest off KT-22 in Squaw Valley. After Shane’s death in 2009, Sherry McConkey came to Hansi seeking a peaceful eagle designed out of steel to symbolize her husband. Hansi spent hours trying to come up with the perfect design.
“I tried to plan it and plan it, I was paralyzed by planning,” Hansi said. But as the metal heated, the eagle came to be as it is today. “We climbed to the top, me with the Eagle, Sherry with the welder … Everyone welded it on, Sherry and even little Ayla [McConkey].”
Broken lawn chairs are the most common items that people bring by the forge to be fixed. As the Standheiners see it, the local blacksmith has an obligation to provide the community with metal working services, no matter how small the job. Staying true to this objective, Mountain Forge continues its 46-year role as a staple in the North Lake Tahoe community, known for its public art, skiing, and lawn chair repairs.
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