Back in the day (mid to late 1990’s) Mark Williams put together a list of metal craft related suppliers. It was freakin’ HUGE text file of nearly 1000 vendors for everything a metalsmith could want. Soup to nuts. The problem was that this big text file was not “internet ready.”

So, I volunteered to help ABANA get the puppy up and running as a searchable index on the ABANA website. I had no budgeted funds and nothing but a fist full of perl scripts and some time but I managed to get it up and running. It was simple, a bit kludgey, but it worked. A few years later ABANA hired a consultant who put the whole thing in a database, but I still think my home-rolled solution worked better.

Fast forward to 2008; I was searching through some old archived files and came across the original files for the suppliers index. I have learned a lot since then, so I decided that I would use this data as the seed for the “EAI” or “Elektric Anvil Index.” A free index of any metal craft related vendor that wants to list themselves as well as any metal artisan that wanted to list their business. Free, dynamic and searchable.

I have just started entering the vendors and artisans I have on file, and this will take me a while, but if you would like to add your company, a company you patronize, or an artist that you would like to promote, please feel welcome to do so!