Sergi Cadenas

Sergi Ca­de­nas was born in Girona in 1972. When he was 15 years old he started work­ing in his fa­ther's work­shop, and just five years later he was run­ning it. Ca­de­nas' artis­tic de­vel­op­ment has al­ways been linked to the world of the ar­ti­san. He stud­ied de­sign and artis­tic iron­mon­gery in the Gremi de Ser­rallers in Barcelona, and even though he is a skilled painter, he has never stud­ied draw­ing and is en­tirely self-taught.

Nowa­days, he is re­spon­si­ble for Fer­ros d'Art Ca­de­nas, the fam­ily busi­ness, a well known com­pany in Girona which has been around for al­most three cen­turies. Since his pre­de­ces­sors moved there in the first half of the 19th cen­tury, the foundry has been an es­sen­tial part of the cul­tural and ar­chi­tec­tural his­tory of the city. Sergi's great-grand­fa­ther, Non­ito, worked with the ar­chi­tect Rafel Masó, and his wrought-iron work can be seen in more than one of Masó's con­struc­tions.

Sergi has con­tin­ued the fam­ily trade, and he is now a recog­nised ar­ti­san who is spe­cialised in forg­ing tech­niques. He also works and col­lab­o­rates with dif­fer­ent ar­chi­tects from Girona.

1. Per­fo­rated mould, used to shape mea­sured iron rods.

2. Wooden-han­dled cut­ters with metal blades. Used in ham­mer­ing out and re­fin­ing the ob­ject.

3. Rounded iron tongs for grip­ping met­als at high tem­per­a­tures.

4. Ball peen, the ball is used to beat the metal and the flat end to smooth it out. a

5. Straight-peen sledge: it takes two peo­ple to get this off the ground and use it to beat the metal.

6. Flat pre­ci­sion ham­mer, This does what the big­ger ver­sions can­not do.

7. Flat tongs to grip smaller cuts and ob­jects at el­e­vated tem­per­a­tures.

8. Anvil, the heart of any forge or smithy, its var­ied shape al­lows the metal to be beaten into dif­fer­ent forms.

9. Metal shears, an ex­tremely use­ful tool for cut­ting and preen­ing finer met­als down into the de­sired form.

10. Min­eral car­bon hearth and black­smith's fire, the min­eral car­bon burns at a higher tem­per­a­ture than nor­mal coal and makes the metal far more maleable with less ef­fort.

11. Drop ham­mer, de­spite its size it is a mo­bile im­ple­ment that when placed over an anvil ex­erts a great force to ma­nip­u­late larger pieces of metal.

Fer­ros d'Art­Ca­de­nas - c/ Nou 5 Girona, 972202672