On Saturday and Sunday, Mr Savill gave smithing demonstrations at the gasworks. He also ran workshops teaching smithing skills throughout the week.
Mr Savill used to work as a journalist, until he got fed up with it about four years ago.
He wanted to work with his hands and his quest to find something to do eventually led him to Westport. There he spent a year living in a barn without electricity and learning the basics of blacksmithing on a course designed to pacify Westport's delinquent youth run by local blacksmith Robert Green.
After a year in Westport and a failure to find another blacksmith to continue training with, Mr Savill returned to Auckland and enrolled in Unitec's Bachelor of Design and Visual Art, which he completed. Mr Savill has spent the last three summers running a coal forge at Barry Brickell's Driving Creek Railway and Pottery in Coromandel. He also runs a forge at the Corban Estate Art Centre, in Henderson, Auckland.
Using both coal and gas forges, Mr Savill uses traditional blacksmithing techniques to create both functional and sculptural objects. Blacksmithing was not a fast way of making things and it was physically demanding, Mr Savill said.
However, the image of the huge muscular man pounding away on his anvil popularised in films was not accurate. Many of the best blacksmiths were not physically imposing, as it was precision that mattered most, Mr Savill said.
