By John Shanahan

Truth be told, when Michigan-based metalsmith David Huang first came across the art of metal raising in college, he didn’t care for it. Given a 12-inch disc of 14-gauge (2 mm) bronze by his professor, Huang hammered away at it, but turned in a piece of work he says “was not a complete vessel.” It was, he confesses, just too much work at the time. Luckily for Huang and the metalwork-admiring world at large, that was not the end of the story.