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About Matt Olseng, Co-owner

At the Right Hand of the Father

I began my journey with tools in hand and awe in my eyes. At the age of seven, my father, a home builder, woke me early one morning and said, “You’re coming to work with me today.” To a young boy, that was nothing short of a summons to adventure. My father was my hero, and I eagerly leapt out of bed with a simple, “Okay!”

This particular project was special—it was the first home my father was building for his own family. From foundation to roof, I watched in wonder as he shaped our future home with skill, precision, and a quiet, commanding presence. I spent the day by his side, probably more a hindrance than a help, but desperate to contribute. I swept floors, picked up nails one by one, and carried a tiny toolbelt holding an old hammer, a pencil, and a collection of bent nails I had rescued from the ground.

At one point my father asked me to carry a bunch of 2×4’s from one place to another. I began carrying them one at a time when my father said something I have never forgotten: “You can carry more than that, can’t you?” I nodded, and he replied, “You make sure you always carry as much as you can. Work isn’t easy, but when we work, we work hard.”

Those words broadened my little shoulders that day and planted the seed of a work ethic I have carried ever since, and shaped the way I approach every challenge in life and in craft.

Low Points Spark a New Interest

As a kid, motorcycles fascinated me. I lived for the competition, the speed, and the skill it demanded. Mistakes are punished racing motorcycles. In June 2002, on the weekend of my sixteenth birthday, that passion nearly ended when a mistake resulted in a shattered pelvis, leaving me unable to walk for months.

Stuck at home, unable to move around without crutches and reliant on my parents for even the simplest tasks, I searched for a new outlet. Television shows about metal fabrication and custom motorcycles caught my eye—builders welding, shaping, and creating. Watching them, I realized that I could channel my energy into a new skill: welding.

I bought a cheap welder from Home Depot and set it up in the garage. From the moment I started, I was hooked. Welding gave me a way to make things permanent, to transform raw steel into objects of utility and beauty. That summer, seated in a chair, I welded everything I could find. A new passion was born, one that would define the trajectory of my life.

My First Job

After a summer spent welding in the garage, I was ready to turn passion into practice. The school offered internships, and I decided to set up my own. I found a two-man fabrication shop, called the owner, and explained that I didn’t need pay—I simply wanted experience.

Two weeks before school started, fate intervened. The shop’s only employee quit, and the owner offered me a real job. That was my first “interview,” though no words were exchanged beyond a simple, “Do you want the job?” My answer was immediate: yes.

Diverse Work Breeds Versatility

At that shop, no day was ever the same. I worked on heavy equipment, repaired machinery, fabricated parts for M1 Abrams tanks, prototyped rescue systems for the fire service, built steel structures and railings, and even welded a rocket launcher for safe demonstration. I fixed every type of broken office chair imaginable.

That shop taught me adaptability, problem-solving, and the courage to tackle the unknown. We pivoted from project to project daily, never knowing what the next challenge would be—but always confident that with focus and effort, we could figure it out. This versatility became the foundation of my craftsmanship and entrepreneurial journey. 

The Big Leap

By the age of 22, I was ready to strike out on my own. After six years of learning, sweating, and diversifying my fabrication skills, I rented a corner of a barn from a friend and set up my own shop. I brought the tools I had accumulated and continued doing work similar to what I had done before: fixing odd machines, making railings, and fabricating earth moving buckets.

One day, an architect my father knew asked me to make a polished stainless steel pot rack. Though I had never made something quite like it, I accepted the challenge. The piece took time and experimentation, but the client loved it. That single commission opened doors. Suddenly, people saw what I could create beyond repairs and industrial fabrication—they saw artistry, precision, and vision.

 

A Blacksmith Without an Anvil

As my architectural work grew, I was presented with an opportunity to try forging. The same architect who hired me for the pot rack asked if I could create a French-inspired outdoor kitchen canopy. I agreed, even though I had no forge, no anvil, and minimal tools.

I improvised: a thick steel plate became my anvil, a ball pein hammer my tool, and a torch my forge. Hours of trial and error followed, learning how to shape flowing scrolls and fishtail ends, coaxing motion and fluidity from the metal. In the end, the client was thrilled, and I had discovered blacksmithing—a skill that would define my career.

The Flood

After that first forging project, opportunities multiplied. Word of my work spread through builders, designers, and architects. I joined NOMMA (National Ornamental & Miscellaneous Metals Association), entering design competitions that judged craftsmanship nationwide. It was also in this organization that I met Kara. 

My first entry—that French canopy—won a silver medal, igniting that competitive fire within me. Just as racing once did. Over the next five years, my shop won 13 awards, culminating in the Mitch Heitler Award for Excellence for a forged copper-nickel railing. That project, unusual in material and form, exemplified my signature style: modern work that looks like an heirloom on day one.

Through it all, the pattern remained: I often accepted projects with no prior knowledge, relying on problem-solving, determination, and a willingness to learn.

Ironware Calls

In the spring of 2020, I had just purchased a building and added sophisticated machinery to my operation—preparing to scale up when the pandemic struck. Amid uncertainty, in 2021, I received an email from Karin Eaton, owner of Ironware International, a luxury lighting company in Nashville. COVID significantly disrupted the trading relationship with their French manufacturer. As a result,  she was seeking a U.S.-based blacksmith capable of executing the full range of their products.

At this point kara had purchased her father’s company SCF, and our companies frequently worked together. MDO assisted SCF to branch out into some more architecturally focused projects. It was on site at one of those projects that Kara and I met Karin Eaton, the founder of Ironware International. 

Through mutual NOMMA connections, I was referred to Karin, as someone that would take on her project and help solve her dilemma.  I met Karin in person in southern Indiana while working on a structure installation with Kara. We saw the beauty and skill of her pieces firsthand, and an agreement was reached: MDO would manufacture Ironware’s products domestically.

Evolution in Process

For the next two years, we learned to reproduce Ironware’s entire product line with no drawings or tooling from the French manufacturer. Using photographs, skill, and experience, we rebuilt processes from scratch. Mistakes were inevitable, but through trial and careful refinement, we developed a system that preserved the handmade quality while improving efficiency and repeatability.

The process was laborious, demanding, and intensely satisfying. Every day, we reinforced our philosophy: honoring traditional craftsmanship while embracing innovation where it serves the work, never at the cost of the handmade soul of the pieces.

The Opportunity Arises

After two years of successful collaboration, Karin was ready to retire and sell Ironware after 36 years at the helm. Kara and I faced a life-changing opportunity: to own a company dedicated to handcrafted furniture and lighting—our shared dream realized.

Though the company was in another state, and our lives were already full, every step of our past had prepared us. My father’s lesson to “carry as much as you can” echoed through every decision, reminding us that hard work, perseverance, and courage could turn possibility into reality.

In September 2023, we purchased Ironware. Since then, we have poured our energy, vision, and passion into shaping the company into a reflection of our craft, values, and dedication to making work that combines beauty, utility, and soul.

The Future

Our vision for Ironware is simple yet profound: to honor the timeless craft of blacksmithing while creating pieces that are meaningful, functional, and heirloom-worthy from day one. We continue to refine processes, embrace challenges, and mentor the next generation of artisans.

Ironware is more than a company; it is a platform to celebrate creativity, skill, and passion. Every forged scroll, every polished surface, and every meticulously crafted piece tells a story—our story, intertwined with the legacy of those who taught us, inspired us, and trusted us to carry their vision forward.

We work hard, carry all we can, and strive to create functional art that will endure, inspire, and captivate for generations to come.

About Kara Jerden, Co-owner

The spark that changed everything

I’ve always made the final tipping point of all major life decisions based on a question: “Would this make a good story for my grandkids one day?” That single question has gotten me into more peculiar, fantastical, cringe-worthy, delightful, and utterly stupid situations than I could begin to tell you about.

In part, I think I got that spontaneous, live-life-large-and-by-the-seat-of-your-pants mentality from growing up around my dad’s best friend, Jimmy Caldwell. Jimmy was extreme in every way—particularly the entertaining ones. He was an adrenaline junkie with a creative streak wider than the Columbia River Gorge where he disappeared one night kayaking in the moonlight. But what really shaped me was watching how Jimmy treated rules like polite suggestions and failures like punchlines to better stories. He could build anything from a zipline though the woods to a crazy wood and steel spiral staircase and he’d jump from blacksmithing to leatherworking, letting each medium inform the others in ways that made his work impossible to categorize. To him, creativity wasn’t about mastering one thing—it was about playing with everything until something magical emerged.

After his funeral, I found myself in his blacksmith shop, nursing beers and grief in equal measure. That’s when something magical happened. As I watched the hot metal move with every blow of the hammer, I became transfixed by the raw possibility of it all—the ability to move metal into any shape the mind could imagine. Jimmy’s ghost was practically laughing at me, knowing I’d caught the bug.

The 8-hour gamble

Bryan turned out to be cut from the same cloth as Jimmy—a motorcycle-riding rocker who could jump on stage with any rock band or sit down with a classical Spanish guitar and make you forget where you were. He had that same devil-may-care attitude where failures were just stepping stones to better stories, never something to dwell on. Looking back, I think I might have hoodwinked the poor guy with pure enthusiasm alone—because somehow, I walked away with an apprenticeship offer.

It’s that same “rules are suggestions” philosophy that drives how we approach Ironware today. When clients bring us ideas that seem impossible or projects that don’t fit neatly into traditional categories, we don’t see obstacles—we see the beginning of a story worth telling.

Building the foundation

I picked up my life and moved to learn the craft properly. For two years, I built rails, gates, and all sorts of odds and ends alongside Bryan, soaking up everything I could about working with metal. When the apprenticeship wrapped up, I landed at SCF—a structural steel fabrication shop that, in one of life’s beautiful ironies, I now own. Those early days were all about mastering the basics of fabrication.

The mountain interlude and Colorado discovery

Like any good story, mine needed a detour through Wyoming, where I spent time tinkering in the mountains on my own. Eventually, I made my way to Colorado and Living Design Studio—a well-known architectural fabricator that completely blew open what I thought was possible.

This is where I learned that “good enough” isn’t enough when you’re working with high-end, high-dollar clients who expect perfection. Every project stretched me in different directions—wire mesh-wrapped canopies for hotel lobby bars, massive steel fireplace surrounds, intricate forged railings—and each one demanded a completely different skill set and material knowledge. The work incorporated wood, glass, various metals, and finishes I’d never touched before. I loved always feeling challenged, always being pushed to deliver flawless quality no matter how complex the brief.

That relentless standard of excellence? It’s non-negotiable at Ironware. Every piece we create has to pass the grandkids test—will this be something worth talking about in 50 years? If the answer is anything less than an enthusiastic yes, we go back to the forge.

The accidental Vegas chapter

Las Vegas wasn’t exactly in my five-year plan, but sometimes life has other ideas. I “accidentally” opened a fabrication shop there after a friend of a friend discovered I was a certified welder. The slew of restaurants his company owned kept bringing me work, and before I knew it, I was running my own operation in the desert.

Coming to build

Eventually, I moved back to Indiana to work at my father’s structural steel shop—the same SCF where I’d learned the basics years earlier. Initially, I thought I’d hate the business side of things. Instead, I discovered something unexpected: the deep satisfaction of building structures that literally changed the landscape of the area where I grew up.

By 2019, I’d bought the company from my dad and found myself loving every project and every partnership involved in making it happen. But something was missing—that no-holds-barred creative outlet that had first captured me in Jimmy’s shop. I was building buildings, but I wasn’t experimenting, playing, or pushing boundaries the way Jimmy and Bryan had taught me to.

 

The Chicago connection

That’s when I partnered with MDO, a fabricator in Chicago, stretching SCF into more unusual, design-focused projects. I’d regularly travel there to forge with Matt, chasing that creative high I’d been missing. During one of these collaborations in summer 2021, Matt mentioned a brand called Ironware that had approached him about manufacturing their pieces.

Enter Ironware

Matt and I were working on an SCF-MDO partnership project—installing a complex, beautiful structure in southern Indiana—when Karin, Ironware’s previous owner, drove up to meet him at our job site. Given my blacksmithing background, I got pulled into that first conversation.

Karin later told us she was blown away that just the two of us were handling the installation of something so intricate. She could see right away that we weren’t the type to back down from a challenge, that we had both the passion and the technical chops to push Ironware beyond where it had already been. Life has a way of bringing things full circle, and two years later, when she was ready to retire and looking for someone to carry on Ironware’s nearly four-decade legacy of handcrafted, heirloom-quality pieces, I faced an impossible choice.

The intoxicating fear

I was already stretched thin, juggling way more than any sane person should attempt. (Ask any of my exes—the first descriptors anyone would use about me would decidedly NOT boast of my merits of sanity.) The rational part of my brain was screaming that this was insanity wrapped in a business proposal.

But that pull—that gravitational force toward being part of something legendary, toward having endless ability to create anything that crawled out of the dark corners of imagination—it was stronger than morphine and twice as dangerous. The fear of failure felt tiny compared to the terror of wondering “what if” for the rest of my life.

Here’s what I know

The same restless creativity that drove Jimmy to experiment across mediums, that made Bryan fearless in his craft, that pulled me from Wyoming to Colorado to Vegas and back home—that’s what Ironware deserves. Not someone who’ll keep things safe and stagnant, but someone who’ll ask, “what if we tried this?” and “how can we make this even better?”

And here’s what makes this transition different from most business acquisitions: the entire Ironware team made the journey with us. We’re talking hundreds of years of combined experience—our general manager alone has been working with Ironware pieces for over 30 years. This isn’t a restart; it’s an evolution. We’re taking one of the world’s oldest known crafts and bringing it fearlessly into the 21st century, built on the foundation of nearly four decades of Ironware’s proven excellence.

We won’t be boxed in by what fireplace tools or multi-tier chandeliers are “supposed” to look like. That playful exploration my mentors taught me—letting different artistic interests bleed into the metalwork, treating each failure as research for the next experiment—that’s where Ironware is headed. The incredible tradition of blacksmithing craftsmanship around the world? We’re building on that, expanding it, pushing it further. Who knows where that curiosity will take us? But I guarantee it’ll be worth documenting.

Sometimes the best decisions are the ones that scare you so badly you can taste your own heartbeat. And sometimes, if you’re really lucky, the ghost of an old friend and fellow thrill seeker might nudge you toward the forge and leave your ears ringing with the question: “How about this story for the grandkids?”

When you work with Ironware, you’re not just buying a piece of metal—you’re commissioning a story. One backed by nearly 40 years of proven craftsmanship and a team whose collective expertise spans generations. One that your grandkids will fight over inheriting. One that makes guests stop mid-conversation to ask, “Where did you get that?” One that represents the same devil-may-care creativity and uncompromising quality that’s been passed down through generations of makers who refused to play it safe.

We’re not going anywhere. We’re the people who don’t back down from complex installations, who answer the phone ourselves, and who’ve surrounded ourselves with master craftspeople who’ve been perfecting this art for decades. We’re taking ancient craft into the future, one fearless project at a time.

So when you’re ready to create something that’ll make your own grandkids stop and stare, you know where to find us. Just be prepared to answer the question: “Will this make a good story?”

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