\7

In reality \7 doesn’t start with me, but my grandfather, John Ludvig Holmgren. Born in 1917, John was the son of immigrants from Sweden. The Holmgren’s lived on their homestead outside Columbus, Montana, where they raised cattle. As time marched on, John eventually had his own cattle business and had the brand \7. John spent the majority of his life at the ranch and even did small task into his early 90s.

I was born in 1997 in Virginia. My mother, who was originally from Montana, wanted to move back, and in 2004 we found an opportunity. We moved to the small town of Florence in western Montana and finally were home. This is where my story truly begins.

While I was always obsessed with fire, my metal journey started in high school. I took my first welding class and I was hooked. As it so happened, a close friend of mine was the great grandson of Ruana Knife Works founder, Rudolph H. Ruana. my friends father was also a knife maker and helped me make my first knife. it was a crude blade, with uneven bevels and unnecessarily pointy, but it was mine. Shortly after that, I decided to start blacksmithing. I hammed metal to the best of my abilities but I never really knew what I was doing.

After Highschool, I went to college in Helena, Montana to get an associates degree in welding. I obtained it and moved into the workforce. In 2017, I took a job near my home town and went to work. What people never told me about welding was how dreary it could be. A realization hit me one morning, after laying over 600 small welds before lunch, that this sucked. Eventually after getting laid off from my job, I moved on to better and brighter things.

In 2022 after a series of other jobs, I decided to take blacksmithing seriously and through caution to the wind. I started a small shop in my parent’s garage and got to work. I made small things but decided that I needed to get better. Luckily for me, the New Agrarian School for blacksmithing was just north of me. I spent 8 longs weeks of hard work there but I came out with the knowledge I needed. in the summer of 2023, I returned to the school for another 4 weeks to learn about mosaic damascus from Jordan LaMothe and farm tools from Jeffery Funk.

Currently my focus has been in knives but I’m expanding into other works such as art, tools, and blades.

But why \7? in reality I didn’t know my grandfather that well, seeing as he was 80 years older then me. However, I spent a lot of time at the ranch. That’s where I learned about all of the hard work that he did to give his family a good life. He gave me all of his smithing tools that I still use. I will never be a rancher or a cowboy, but I can use his brand as a way to honor him and keep his spirit alive