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Rented Virtue - by Will Manidis and Nabeel S. Qureshi

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Will Manidis & Nabeel S. Qureshi

The Forge In January of 1709, in a steep gorge cut by the river Severn in the midlands of England, a 30-year-old Quaker named Abraham Darby fired a blast furnace for the first time. The furnace had been built decades earlier and blown up around 1703 by a previous operator. It sat derelict in the Coalbrookdale Valley, where coal and iron ore lay in abundance near the surface of the valley walls, and a narrow stream cut through the bottom with enough force to drive a water wheel and bellows. Darby had leased the wreck in September of 1708, the year prior, and spent a few months rebuilding…

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