In a smithy, everything moves except the anvil. The hammer swings, the sparks fly, the red iron changes shape, and the great block of steel under it stands unmoved, taking the blows. A worker may not notice it for hours. Yet without it, nothing can be made, because the hammer needs something to push against. The anvil is the plainest of the smith's tools and one of the oldest, and in myth and language it came to stand for firmness, for the support of work and for the patient endurance of a beating. An Old Tool The first anvils were stones. Prehistoric toolmakers and early coppersmiths hammered metal against a hard rock. As iron came into use in the first millennium BCE, smiths made anvils of iron and steel, and their shape became more specialized, with a flat face, a tapering horn for bending curves and a hole for holding tools. The basic form of the anvil has changed little in two thousand years. Its weight is part of its function. A heavy anvil absorbs the energy of the ham...