The rhythmic hammering echoed off the walls of Paul Angiolillo’s horse trailer perched near Teton Pass.
Sparks flew from his anvil as he forged another piece of cookware, working by the light filtering through the trailer's small windows.
It wasn't glamorous, but it was the beginning of something.
"That was my original shop," Angiolillo told Cowboy State Daily, explaining that a quality workspace was hard to come by in Jackson, where he also worked as a farrier and a ski patroller at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.
Then the New York native caught a break.
"One of my good friends I was shoeing horses with — her friends were very willing to open up shop space for me at their 40-by-60 shop on their ranch in Freedom," he explained.
The move from horse trailer to proper workshop opened up possibilities that Angiolillo first glimpsed in his dreams.
"I actually started having dreams about anvils and stuff in my sleep," he said. "But that's where that all started. I always wanted to do something more with metal, because that's more like one of the things that drew me into the trade."
Angiolillo moved west at 19, eventually landing at Montana State University's farrier school. It was there, watching hot metal bend to a craftsman's will, that his imagination latched on to what’s possible when shaping hot carbon steel.
"I was like, ‘Wow, I think like that's something I could do,’” said Angiolillo, reflecting on a journey that started over a decade ago.
Angiolillo now hand-hammers about 600 pieces per year, each one bearing the texture of his craftsmanship. He forges French skillets, griddles and chapas — which are portable, flat cooking surfaces perfect for suspending over open fires.
He sells smash burger presses, spatulas, trivets a custom bacon and egg skillet and a full carbon steel 65-gallon smoker for $3,500.
The 12.5-inch Wyoming Range Skillet goes for $225, while the chapas cost $165.
Some items are available at the Kuhl retail store in Jackson, and Angiolillo heads out on the road every summer, attending festivals and interacting with customers drawn to the beauty of his metal work.
A carbon steel chapa, built for healthy cooking over an open fire. (Independent Ironware) 
Paul Angiolillo and his Willys Jeep. (Independent Ironware) Paul Angiolillo and his Willys Jeep. (Independent Ironware)
Family Legacy
The transition from horseshoes to cookware wasn't a random evolution for Angiolillo.
"For a few generations, my family's been in the food business," he said. "So, one day I was just like, I mixed both of the things together. Both things that I knew intimately. And that's how I came up with making cookware."
The family connection goes back generations. According to his website, it all started when his great-grandmother crossed the Atlantic and survived by selling handmade cheese.
Her skills helped the family weather the Great Depression and created a culture where he said that "food is everything, and what you put into your body is imperative to your wellbeing."
This simple truth extends to the surfaces we cook on.
Angiolillo’s material comes from the closest steel yard — in Idaho Falls, about 90 minutes from Freedom, Wyoming.
"Steel is the most recycled product in the United States. And over 65% of steel is recycled," he said, adding another layer of sustainability to his operation.
The carbon steel he works with offers advantages over traditional cast iron that make it ideal for both his blacksmithing techniques and modern cooking needs.
"Carbon steel is basically high-performance cast iron," he explained. "It does high temp cooking really well, exceptionally well. So, salting and searing and it is completely nontoxic.
“And the more you use it, you build up your patina and the better your seasoning gets."
For a time, Angiolillo worked as a fishing guide, and during one trip, his client started talking about his work as a chemist.
“A chemist that specifically works with PFOA,” said Angiolillo.
PFOA refers to perfluorooctanoic acid, and it’s a synthetic perfluorinated carboxylic acid that has been widely used to manufacture non-stick cookware.
PFOA is part of a larger, infamous group known as "forever chemicals" because they do not break down in the environment and can persist for decades and cause cancer.
“We talked about it for six hours on the water because I was interested in how it bioaccumulates in your body. You're even getting it through your rain jacket,” recalled Angiolillo.
But cast iron and carbon steel offer a healthier alternative to the toxic teflon of cheaper cookware.
"Mostly because their natural materials are nontoxic and all our bodies were 18.5% carbon,” he said. “So, everything in this cookware is meant to be in your body, and you need an iron mineral to thrive as well.”
Paul Angiolillo got his start as a farrier. (Independent Ironware) 
Freedom on wheels: The official jeep of Independent Ironware. (David Madison, Cowboy State Daily)
Health, Food, Community
On a recent Sunday morning in Helmville, Montana, Angiolillo greeted visitors to his corner of the “Makers Tent” at the Old Salt Festival.
A celebration of locally sourced, sustainable food systems, the Old Salt Festival is a good fit for Angiolillo because “these are my people.”
What he means is the festival goers are like-minded in their intentional approach to producing, cooking and enjoying great food.
"What attracted to me to this event — it's like everything. I like all the music. I love the Western lifestyle," said Angiolillo.
As festival goers passed by, admiring his frying pans and burger presses, a repeat customer named Kevin Krolczyk approached Angiolillo, offering an unprompted testimonial.
"The stuff that I bought was so awesome. I bought pans for all three of my boys,” Krolczyk told Angiolillo. “Then I showed up at my son's house in Missoula and I saw it sitting right on his stove. And he cooked me breakfast the next morning and flipped the eggs right over.”
As Angiolillo beamed, taking in the high praise, Krolczyk pantomimed the wrist-flick motion skilled cooks use to flip eggs in a pan without using a spatula.
"He said it gets used three times a day. So I'm back for more,” said Krolczyk as he collected and purchased a griddle and other items.
Other fans of Independent Ironware include Evan Tate, a Texas-based rancher and live-fire chef who's gained recognition for serving musicians like Willie Nelson and Charley Crockett. Angiolillo connected with Tate at Dusty Vaquero Days in Gillette back in May.
In his festival display booth, Angiolillo likes to park a 1953 Willys Jeep – his grandfather's rig that sat in a barn for 30 years before Paul brought it back to life.
"Now it runs like a top. Funnily enough, this jeep is starting to be associated with me," he said, adding that he might drive it during the Fourth of July Parade in Freedom this year.
Locating his business — Independent Ironware — in Freedom was "a complete coincidence," he insisted, but fitting.
"It's called Independent Ironware because of basically my independent nature as a person," he said. "I started this basically because of my own endless pursuit of personal freedom.”
No longer alone hammering away in a horse trailer, Angiolillo marvels at the network he’s built attending festivals and becoming a local in Freedom.
“My hand touches every piece,” Angiolillo said in a promotional video produced by Kuhl. “But my favorite thing, which actually shocks me, is you buy a piece of my cookware, and it impacts hundreds of people in my community because I have to go buy drill bits at the hardware store and buy steel from the steel yard.
“To buy all these little things to make this one little pan.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
