Dozens of hammers and tongs hang from the walls; kebab skewers, knives and axes lie across the benches; a length of steel glows in the fire.
asserted
length → hang → fire
But for those familiar with fantasy worlds and gaming, a second look may be required.
uncertain
look → require → worlds
Just a few steps inside the workshop's shutter-style doors, an enormous forged fantasy sword rests across a countertop, similar to the one wielded by the Lich King in the popular video game World of Warcraft.
asserted
sword → forge → Warcraft
Elsewhere are weapons inspired by TV series and video games, including Game of Thrones and League of Legends, rendered in steel.
asserted
weapons → inspire → steel
At the forge, Suleyman Akdemir, a large man with a furrowed brow, grips a glowing length of metal with long tongs, draws it from the fire, and lays it across the anvil.
asserted
Akdemir → grip → anvil
A few metres away, his father, Omer, 54, reaches for a tool.
asserted
father → reach → tool
Then the power hammer crashes down, its blows reverberating through the narrow workshop and out into the covered streets of Izmir’s Kemeralti bazaar, forcing conversation to wait.
asserted
blows → crash → conversation
Suleyman, 30, wears a brown leather apron over a black T-shirt, his hands encased in black gloves.
asserted
hands → wear → gloves
His father rarely stops working while he talks; Suleyman often pauses, turning towards his customers before returning to the forge.
asserted
Suleyman → stop → forge
Here, they seem less like family than two craftsmen who have spent years learning how to work around one another.
asserted
who → seem → one
When the hammer falls silent, Suleyman turns from the forge.
“Ever since I was a child.
asserted
I → fall → forge
I’d say since I first learned to walk, I've been working here with hot forging,” he says, breaking into a smile.
asserted
he → say → smile
The surroundings bear that history.
asserted
surroundings → bear → history
The fantasy weapons are newcomers to a workshop where Suleyman's family has practised blacksmithing for generations.
asserted
family → practise → generations
Yet, incongruous as they look among the agricultural tools and barbecue skewers, they may be one reason the forge is still running.
uncertain
forge → look → tools
“Thank God, we can make anything we see,” Suleyman says.
asserted
Suleyman → thank → anything
That conviction has taken the Akdemirs somewhere his predecessors could hardly have imagined.
uncertain
predecessors → take → Akdemirs
Customers from around the world now send Suleyman images and ideas inspired by weapons they have seen on screen, which he interprets as individually designed, hand-forged pieces.
asserted
he → send → pieces
Kemeralti has been a commercial centre of Izmir for centuries, with its dense network of streets and hans stretching inland from the city's waterfront.
asserted
network → stretch → waterfront
He was seven or eight, he says, when he became fascinated by the machine, which weighs about 1.5 tonnes.
asserted
which → say → tonnes
He watched it rise and fall over the incandescent iron.
asserted
it → watch → iron
“I was spellbound when I saw it,” he says.
asserted
he → see → it
“I knew right then that I would do this for a living."
asserted
I → know → living
By 12, he was using a hammer himself.
asserted
he → use → hammer
The first object he forged was considerably less dramatic than the weapons now surrounding him: everyday cooking utensils.
asserted
he → forge → him
After school, he returned to the workshop, learning to make hoes, billhooks, axes, skewers and other household objects.
asserted
he → return → hoes
Suleyman trained in taekwondo and considered pursuing sport professionally.
asserted
Suleyman → train → sport
But the difficulty of building a sustainable career in sport eventually brought him back to the trade he had known since childhood.
asserted
he → build → childhood
By then, the business he was inheriting was beginning to change.
asserted
he → inherit → ?
Two or three decades ago, the family says, agricultural tools and basic hardware accounted for nearly all its production.
asserted
tools → say → production
Their customers came largely from Izmir and the surrounding countryside, looking for practical objects made for work.
asserted
customers → come → work
Then some of that work began to disappear.
asserted
some → begin → work
Factory production could make many everyday tools more cheaply, while changes in the work around them erased the need for others.
uncertain
changes → make → others
As tobacco farming declined, so did orders for the needles the Akdemirs once made for growers.
asserted
Akdemirs → decline → growers
Shoemakers who had relied on their hand-forged sole-cutting blades turned instead to laser-cutting technology.
asserted
who → rely → technology
Other agricultural tools increasingly faced competition from mass-produced alternatives.
asserted
tools → face → alternatives
One by one, some of the objects that had kept the forge busy were becoming obsolete.
asserted
that → keep → forge
Omer's generation had inherited a craft.
asserted
generation → inherit → craft
Suleyman was confronting a different question: what happens when people no longer need the things that craft traditionally produces?
asserted
craft → confront → things
"The work my father and his generation do appeals to a specific demographic," he says.
asserted
he → do → demographic
…and 120 more, not listed.
The Aporia
