About Forged

Built by Hand.
Since 1989.

Bruno Kalčič was born in 1967 in Jesenice — a town in the Slovenian Alps where iron and industry are part of the landscape and the local identity. In 1986, he trained as a blacksmith apprentice. He was good at the mechanical side quickly. The artistic side took longer to find.

Local craftsmen in Slovenia guarded their methods jealously. So Bruno went further. He found a master blacksmith in Tyrol, Austria — a man who carried a 250-year family tradition of artistic ironwork and was willing to pass it on. That apprenticeship changed everything. It was not just technique that Bruno brought home. It was a way of thinking about iron — that it is not a material to be bent and welded into shape, but one to be coaxed, worked at temperature, and finished with patience.

In 1989, Bruno opened his own workshop. Thirty-five years later, the forge is still burning. The team is four people — Bruno, his brother Dušan, his son Benjamin, and Gregor. Between them they hold decades of experience at the anvil. Small enough that every piece that leaves this workshop has been touched by someone who cares what it looks like.

We use a coal forge. We use power hammers for heavy stock — not because we are lazy, but because moving 20mm solid iron bar by hand alone takes longer than anyone should wait. Every piece is hand-finished. Everything that goes outdoors is hot-dip galvanized and powder coated. The scrollwork is forged individually. The junctions are wrapped by hand. The rivets are set one at a time. This is not a process you can speed up without losing the thing that makes it worth doing.