Nine commissions a year, forged by hand in Hudson.
Ida Kell makes sculptural balustrades, stairs and fireplace screens for architects and interior designers, working from your concept drawings.
- Typical commission
- $18,000 to $80,000
- Sketch to install
- 4 to 7 months
Wall stair, Warren Street
Hudson, New York, 2024
Mild steel flat bar, hot oil blackened, waxed
Three things I make, and a short list I turn down.
I take on about nine commissions a year, and each one is drawn for a single wall, stair or fireplace. That is the whole studio. If a piece could be ordered twice, it should come from someone else.
Ida Kell
Balustrades
For stairs, landings and mezzanines. Forged balusters, hot-bent rails, fixed to the stringer or the slab.
Stairs
Steel stringers and treads, spiral or straight, made with your structural engineer and ours.
Fireplace screens and hoods
Screens, fenders and hanging hoods in blackened plate, sized to the opening, not to a catalog.
What the studio does not take on
- Driveway gates and garden furniture
- Anything copied from a catalog or another maker
- Railings chosen after the drywall is up
- Powder-coated or painted finishes
Four pieces, each drawn for one room.
Every piece is photographed a week after install, once the dust is gone and the owners have used the stair.
Balustrade, Pellham Street
Kingston, New York, 2025
212 twisted balusters, hot-bent rail
Hanging fire hood, Germantown
Germantown, New York, 2024
3/16 in. plate, raised by hand, blackened
Handrail, Ghent loft
Ghent, New York, 2023
Waxed mild steel, forged brackets
Stairwell rails, four floors
Brooklyn, New York, 2022
Continuous rail, 31 ft, one weld per landing
One commission, start to finish
The Pellham Street balustrade, from a pencil line to 212 twisted bars.
Three flights in a 1920s house in Kingston, for Hartigan Hale Architects. Seven months and a week from first email to handover, at the price we quoted in March.
Sketch three of four, pencil on cartridge paper. 14 January 2025
Four pencil sketches, and she chose the third
Clea Hartigan of Hartigan Hale Architects sent a concept section of the stair void and one line in her email: it should feel drawn with a pencil. I measured the void, took photographs of the light at noon, and sent back four sketches. The third one won: plain square balusters, each with a single twist at hand height, and no newel post at all.
- Took
- 3 weeks
- Sent back
- 4 sketches, 1 site visit
- Fee
- Included in the commission
Sheet 04 of 11: flight one, elevation A. 3 March 2025
Eleven sheets at 1:10, and one sample bar in the mail
Shop drawings for all three flights, checked by our structural engineer against the 200 lb guard load in the code. Before anyone signed, I forged one baluster and posted it to the practice. It sat on Clea’s desk for a week, and the client signed the fixed price the day after she handed it to them.
- Took
- 6 weeks
- Sent back
- 11 sheets, 1 sample bar
- Fixed price
- $46,500 including install
At forging heat, about 1,900°F. 12 May to 27 June 2025
212 balusters, every twist turned in the same jig
Each baluster is 5/8 inch square bar, heated to about 1,900°F and twisted by hand in one jig, so the twists line up down all three flights. The rails are one bar per flight, bent hot around a plywood template of the stair that the contractor let us trace on site.
- Took
- 7 weeks
- Made
- 212 balusters, 3 rails
- Steel
- 1,140 lb of mild steel
The flight two rail after its second coat of wax. 7 to 25 July 2025
Blackened with heat and oil, then waxed by hand
Every piece is wire brushed, brought back up to a dull heat and rubbed with linseed oil, which leaves the soft black you see here. Then two coats of paste wax, buffed by hand. No paint and no powder coat, so the hammer marks stay readable under your palm.
- Took
- 3 weeks
- Finish
- Hot oil blackened, two coats of wax
- Upkeep
- A wipe of wax once a year
Pellham Street, the morning after install. 18 to 21 August 2025
Four days on site, and a tin of wax left on the bottom tread
Two of us and the joiner, fixing into stringers the contractor set to our drawing. The last afternoon went on touching up the wax where the fixings went in. We left the owners a tin of it and a card on how to use it, on the bottom tread where a newel would normally stand.
- Took
- 4 days
- First email to handover
- 7 months and 1 week
- Final cost
- $46,500, as quoted
Yours will have its own dates. It will have the same five stages, and you will see every one of them before it is paid for.
Start a commissionSend the concept section. I send back pencil, then steel.
Most of my work comes through architects and interior designers, usually at design development, while the stair void can still move an inch. I work from whatever you have: a hand sketch, a PDF section or a Revit export.
What I need from you
- Plans and a section through the stair, at any stage
- The finish schedule for walls, treads and floor
- Your engineer’s name, if the stair is structural
- A date the void will be ready to measure
What you get back
- Pencil sketches within three weeks of the site visit
- Shop drawings at 1:10, as PDF and DWG, for your set
- Engineering calculations, stamped, for the guard load
- One forged sample bar, before anything is signed
- A fixed price that holds through install
- Commission budgets
- $18,000 to $80,000
- Sketch to install
- 4 to 7 months
- Studio capacity
- About nine pieces a year
- Installs
- Hudson Valley, New York City and the Berkshires
- Payment
- A third at drawings, a third at forging, a third at install
Six years drawing stairs in Manhattan, then a dairy barn in Hudson.
I trained as an architect and spent six years detailing stairs for other people to build. In 2012 I took a weekend forging course in Vermont, and by the spring I had bought a 1952 power hammer from a farm sale and rented the old dairy barn on Route 9G.
It is still just the barn, two gas forges, the hammer and me, with Theo Marsh joining for forging and installs since 2019. Architects are welcome on Fridays to see work in progress and hold a sample bar.
Book a Friday studio visit
What an architect said
“She posted the sample bar before she sent the invoice. By the time the client held it, the argument about the stair was over.”
Tell me about the stair, and where the drawings are.
I reply within two working days, usually with questions. If the timing and the budget fit, the next step is a visit to the void with a tape measure.
(555) 014-8181Weekdays, 8 to 4. The phone is off while the forge is lit, so leave a message.