Real-life Thor hammers his way to the top of Korea's metalworking world

Arts & Design

Published: 07 Mar. 2024, 13:32

Real-life Thor hammers his way to the top of Korea's metalworking world

″Moonvase″ (2022) [WILLIAM SANG-HYEOB LEE]

AS A MATTER OF CRAFT

Editor's note: An old cultural genre in Korea has been gaining new recognition on the global stage: crafts. From finalists at the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize to featured artists in numerous exhibitions overseas, the crafts of Korean artists have, as a matter of fact, become reputable works of art. In this series, the Korea JoongAng Daily interviews contemporary craftspeople who each specialize in a certain medium that uniquely represents the prestige of Korean tradition and culture.

A real-life Thor could never actually be a superhero, but he sure could be a mighty metalsmith like 49-year-old William Sang-hyeob Lee.

When Lee showed the Korea JoongAng Daily the Mjolnir-like hammer that he used to make his whopping 31-kilogram (68-pound) silverware that was exhibited at the Cheongju Craft Biennale last year, he was hardly short of the mighty god from Asgard in the Marvel Universe.

And just like how a superhero is destined to use their power to make the world a better place, it was only natural for Lee to become a reputable metalsmith of his silver, hand-hammered vessels.

Master of the forging technique, the most basic method in metalwork in which metal sheets are hammered into shapes like bowls or jars, his workplace is regularly filled with the heavy, rhythmic thunk, thunk, thunks every day.

William Sang-hyeob Lee works on ″Untitled″ (2023), which started out as a 31-kilogram (68-pound) silver ingot. [WILLIAM SANG-HYEOB LEE]

“I can be very impatient and short-tempered, but I become the calmest person ever whenever I grab metal,” Lee told the Korea JoongAng Daily in an interview at his studio in Jongno District, central Seoul, in January.

“I’ve dealt with clay and glass, but even those materials never really appealed to me. I’m so drawn to the firmness of metal, especially when it’s larger in scale.”

Lee first shot to stardom when he shocked the world with his silver metal reinterpretation of the traditional ceramic moon jar in the 2000s. He continued to prove his superpower through the extent of his works, which are relatively larger and range from 3 kilograms to his latest 31-kilogram silverware.

“People tend to think that because my work involves hammering, we need to put in extra power, but I’ve actually been teaching my students to be less tense and to go easy,” Lee said. “It’s not all about acting tough. You need to be persistent because you have to repeat the same action over and over every day, and the process can get tiresome after a while.”

After studying at the University of Exeter and the University of the Arts London, Lee has worked in both the United Kingdom and Korea for over two decades. He has won many accolades in and out of the country, including the grand prize at the Goldsmiths’ Young Designer Silversmith Award in 2003 and the 2023 Craft Prize by the Korea Craft & Design Foundation.

The work in progress for William Sang-hyeob Lee's ″Untitled″ (2023), made from a 31-kilogram (68-pound) silver ingot [WILLIAM SANG-HYEOB LEE]

His works are in the collection of famed museums and galleries, like London's Victoria and Albert Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It would not be an overstatement to say that Lee is the No. 1 Korean metalworker.

“If anyone asks what my hobby is, I say metalwork. I’m always curious about the properties of metal and how they change when they come in contact with fire,” Lee said with a laugh. “If you place any sort of metal in front of me, I would immediately start hammering it.”

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Metalsmith William Sang-hyeob Lee [WILLIAM SANG-HYEOB LEE]

Q. You mentioned in past interviews that you come from a family who built their own necessities. Would you say that childhood upbringing influenced you to become a metalsmith?

A. My father had pet rabbits, so he built their hutches himself. He made cutting boards and even made furniture for the family. I think it was thanks to his talent for building with his hands, which is why he found pleasure in them. My mother knitted, and we had carpenters and mechanics in the family, too. When I was a kid, it was more expensive to buy finished products anyway.

The thing with having such talent is that you have vivid ideas in your head that don’t even need to be sketched out on paper. I never really had a passion for studying. I went to a technical high school, and that’s when I first tried metal processing and hammering silver. I realized that this was it; that I was destined to do this. I only went to the United Kingdom to receive a proper art education because I felt like I needed to learn how to sketch to communicate my ideas to other people, in order to develop and revise them.

″Horibyung″ (2022) [WILLIAM SANG-HYEOB LEE]

What makes metal special as a material? How are gold, silver, bronze, copper and steel different?

Copper, gold, steel, brass, nickel, you name it: I think I’ve tried hammering every type of metal out there. I’ve even pounded bronze. It wasn’t necessarily to create something out of them, but because I wanted to feel each material for myself and decide what I liked best.

Any metal that is pure — gold, silver, copper and iron — is extremely smooth when pounded. Gold is so soft that it’s easy to spread into a thin layer. So for a metalsmith, gold is easiest to work with. Silver needs to be heated up after hammering. Copper needs to be fired and be treated with acid.

You could store anything inside gold and it would stay intact, including food or liquids. Silver is antibacterial against at least 650 pathogens and is even used in medicine. So it’s wrong to think that silver is bad for the body because it tends to tarnish. You can’t use copper for tableware or cutlery, but since it’s cheaper than silver it’s usually used to make musical instruments or electrical equipment.

″Untitled″ (2023) [WILLIAM SANG-HYEOB LEE]

A close-up of ″Untitled″ (2023) [WILLIAM SANG-HYEOB LEE]

Your “Untitled” (2023) silverware piece for the Cheongju Craft Biennale last year must have been a new challenge for you, as 31-kilogram silverware is unprecedented. What was the process like from start to finish?

Usually a metalsmith buys silver sheets with a set measurement and creates from there. But for the biennale, I wanted to try a size I’d never done before, but I was unable to purchase the appropriate material because the manufacturers just didn’t produce silver sheets that large. So that’s why I bought a silver ingot of 31 kilograms and had to start by smelting it. Because it was such a heavy chunk and I had to do everything by hand, it took me five months just to smelt and hammer it into a flat sheet, and another month to shape it into the bowl-like final result. It was my first time smelting metal, so I even had to make a makeshift furnace. I’m the only metalsmith in the world to create a piece of silverware that big. And to think that people were astonished with my 6-kilogram and 11-kilogram pieces before that!

The 31-kilogram (68-pound) silver ingot before William Sang-hyeob Lee smelted and hammered it into ″Untitled″ (2023) [SHIN MIN-HEE]

The makeshift furnace William Sang-hyeob Lee built inside his studio to smelt a 31-kilogram (68-pound) silver ingot [WILLIAM SANG-HYEOB LEE]

Why is it important to promote metal crafts?

We are very familiar with using metal in our everyday lives. Let’s take the example of tableware — chopsticks in particular. Chopstick culture developed in the order of China, Korea and Japan. Korea is the only country among these three to use metal chopsticks. The rest use wooden chopsticks. Because a lot of our traditional food tended to be fermented [like kimchi] and seasoned, the flavors would seep through wooden utensils, so Koreans opted for steel, which were easier to clean. You could say that Korea is the only country that sees metal on the table.

Metal is also one of the sincerest materials to work with. The effort you put into your metalwork definitely pays off. You can always fix any dents made too, albeit not perfectly, but at least you won’t have to throw it away entirely, which is unlike other crafts like ceramics.

″Maebyung″ (2022) [WILLIAM SANG-HYEOB LEE]

″Dok″ (2022) [WILLIAM SANG-HYEOB LEE]

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that every single craftsperson out there is the epitome of diligence. What is your daily routine like?

I usually come to the studio at around 9 or 10 a.m. I start my day off with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. I work on my metalwork until I need to leave for my dinner plans. If I have nothing that evening, I work straight until midnight. My house is 10 minutes away from my studio, but I find even that to take up too much of my time, so I usually ride my bike, which takes 3 minutes. I don’t even have a single pot or pan at my house — everything in my life, from eating to meeting people, all takes place here in my studio. I just head home to sleep, but thankfully I sleep pretty well after a long day of hammering.

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]