Dietmar Huntel
Hantel Art CEO and Managing Director
VICITY AND SATISFACTION OF THE BAROQUE ERA, THE DECORATION OF THE LOYAL COMPLEXES OF LOUIS XIV AND OTHER ROYAL HOUSES OF EUROPE AND THE INDUSTRIAL AREA OF AL QUOZ, IS SLIPED UP, SHARPED. BUT THIS IS ONLY AT FIRST GLANCE. In fact, in the bosom of this dusty part of the desert, unique masterpieces are created, created by the hands of the real blacksmith.
The subtleties of craft
Ditmar Hantel, General Manager and Managing Director of Hantel Art, meets me at the doorstep of one of the typical warehouse facilities of the Al Quoz zone, which he converted into a forge. It is very hot here (add a few hundred degrees to the Dubai temperature and humidity “overboard” from the blacksmith’s furnace working in the room). Shouting down the noise and knocking of hammers and hammers, Dietmar begins to talk about what Hantel Art is doing and how he ended up in the Emirates: "Hantel Art is a family company that my grandfather opened in Germany in 1969, and in 1971 it My father Karl-Heinz started to manage. We are engaged in a real blacksmithing business. All the men in our family are blacksmiths, even my son Max is already getting a little bit of a tradition of his kind. In our craft, we still use the technologies that were used by blacksmiths in the XVI- XVII centuries. For this we ourselves have to make pour instruments and melt metal in this furnace. " Blacksmithing and professional blacksmiths are still very popular and respected in Germany. Dietmar and his family more than once had to restore the twisted fences and gates of ancient palaces and castles in his native country and other European cities. "Our company and the work of Hantel Art are well known in Germany. However, in 2003 I decided to try to organize production in the Middle East. There were several reasons for this, of which the most important was probably the search for a market with developed infrastructure and inexpensive labor."
In just a few years, Hantel Art managed to occupy its own niche in the UAE market, and among its customers and customers there are many representatives of the ruling families of the Middle East region. In addition, Hantel Art successfully collaborates with the Emirate-based interior design company Boudoir.
Thorns and roses
But success does not come by itself. In the case of Hantel Art, only hard daily work and many months of picking one order lead to recognition and fame. “For one flight of stairs or a garland for a dome, more than 10 thousand iron leaves must be manually forged, each of which takes more than six hours to make. Therefore, the most difficult in our work is physical fatigue. You can’t use machines for forging leaves in the Baroque style, you cannot use casting or welding technologies, you just have to wave the hammer. On the other hand, what did the blacksmiths use in the XVI-XVII centuries? The same hammers and similar technologies. Therefore, if our company, I and my descendants do not if we use old techniques, the blacksmith’s craft will simply die, ”says Dietmar Huntel. “Here, in the Emirates, I had to train 13 people in blacksmithing, and each of them is from a family of blacksmiths, and all the same, the workers at Hantel Art do only the main part of the forging, and I fine-tune each element in the products myself. After all, if I don’t like the final look of the product, I will never send it to the customer. When I give my product to the customer, I must first like it myself. And if the customer is happy, then for me this is an incomparably greater reward than just cash equivalent. "
Ditmar confirms his story with deed. From a small cylindrical piece of metal, standing near the anvil by a red-hot furnace, he begins to forge a rose, which literally "blossoms" before my eyes. The question immediately arises: "And if people like your art, but they don’t have a house that could be decorated with luxurious forged gates, or stairs for which you can make lattices and garlands, what can you offer?". Dietmar Huntel knows the answer. "I really want to open a gallery where we could sell small forged products - chandeliers, candlesticks, sconces, sets for fireplaces and other blacksmith art.
Work in this direction is already underway. To give some elements of the "lace of metal" a golden hue, we use a special paint that looks like real gilding, especially if it is coated with a special water-repellent varnish. Then any forged structure is not afraid of heat, nor dust, nor high humidity. Ultimately, anyone who understands that they are acquiring a handmade piece from Hantel Art using old family secrets of craftsmanship and blacksmithing techniques can become the owner of a true work of art. "
Real art
And here Dietmar did not sin against the truth, since every, even the smallest piece coming out of his workshop, begins with a pencil sketch. Large gates or fences can be up to 35 meters in size, and work on them can be done for a year or two. “Usually, our customers understand that they get much more than they expected, only when they see the final result. By the way, one of my customers was a Ukrainian businessman, Rinat Akhmetov,” says Ditmar. “For him, gates with a height of 7 were made in Hantel Art , 5 meters and a width of 4 meters. Their delivery and assembly on site, which we carried out together with my father, is a different story, but most importantly, the customer appreciated our work and was satisfied. "
Looking at the work of Dimar Hantel and his family members, one involuntarily imbues with respect for people who are engaged in such a simple, at first glance, and surprisingly difficult craft. Holding in my hands a freshly forged iron rose, which could gracefully eclipse a living flower with its grace and beauty, I thought that no computer technology could replace people with living and real art embedded in every work of the artist and parts of the soul of the master. I want to believe that through the efforts of Dietmar and other artisans who are in love with their profession, people will never have to wonder - why do we need a blacksmith? Then, so that everyday life becomes at least a little better and more beautiful! Something like this.
