In the early 2000s TV drama “Gilmore Girls,” Lauren Graham’s witty character Lorelai Gilmore poses an interesting question during a Friday night dinner at her pretentious parents’ house. She asks her dinner guests, “Where did all the anvils go?” She proceeds with a wild rant about how anvils were commonly portrayed in popular culture until they mysteriously disappeared. On a late Saturday night, I wondered deliriously, “Where did all the anvils go?”
Initially, this sparked an internet quest where I learned that anvils are a blacksmithing tool used as a surface for hammering and shaping metal. The earliest anvils were used around 3500–1000 BCE. These anvils were made out of stone, then later bronze. As technology progressed, blacksmiths needed a more durable surface. The wrought iron anvils were born, known for their funny, yet functional appearance. The top of the anvil, the face, is the flat surface the blacksmith uses to shape his metal. The face is made out of hardened steel so the impacts of the hammer’s blows will not damage it. The curved end of the anvil, known as the horn, which characterizes its shape, is used for rounding the edges of metalcrafts. The other end has holes in the face to fit other tools, such as a chisel.
Lorelai believed anvils to be common because of their prevalence in popular culture. Anvils are featured as set decorations in many Western movies and films involving a town blacksmith. In “Looney Tunes,” a popular cartoon series, Wile E. Coyote often uses anvils as part of his schemes to catch the agile Roadrunner. His plans always comically backfire, and the ACME-branded anvil falls on his head causing an anvil-shaped dent to impress the ground. Since anvils were seen as a commonality in the media, Lorelai saw the anvil as being “ubiquitous.”
Lorelai argues that anvils cannot be melted down because they were supposed to withhold the heat of the blacksmith’s tools. This is partially true: blacksmiths used a technique called “forging” where they heat the metal before shaping it, so the anvil is supposed to withstand the heat. However, the anvil itself can be melted down. With the rise of modern technology, anvils became obsolete. Many anvils were melted down for scrap metal to be repurposed. Although this answer is less exciting than the “secret anvil storage facility,” that Lorelai suggested, it is the reason for the anvil’s vanishing act.
Lorelai’s mother, Emily Gilmore, regards the conversation as the most pointless one the family ever had (much like this article). The anvil’s disappearance was subtle, but should not go unnoticed because the 500-pound chunks of metal served an important purpose in the lives of blacksmiths and cartoon aficionados alike.
In the next installment of this feature, we will visit a smith in the New York area.
