1972 → today
A short history.
Started by Roy Reeves in 1972 in a 1,200-square-foot tobacco warehouse on Davidson Street, two blocks from where the shop still stands. Roy came up at the Southern Railway shops in Spencer, learning to forge for trains, and was politely fired in 1971 for taking too long on a single tender brake handle.
He opened Foundry on his own that fall — one coal forge, an anvil from the Carolinas Foundry estate sale, and a hand-painted sign reading "Iron Carries Memory" that's still over the door.
His son Davis joined in 1989 after a stint as a structural welder in the Gulf. His grandson Calvin came on in 2008. Calvin's wife Marisol — trained at the Penland School of Craft — became the fourth full-time smith in 2014, and currently designs about half of the work.
