September, 2004

Tin Man
By Shannon Powers

No doubt, buying a house can change your life. Steve Malaney's quest to get every detail just right in his "new" early 19th-century Middleburg home led to a completely new persona: colonial tinsmith.

"It's the Stone House's fault," laughs Malaney, recounting the saga that began with his 1986 purchase of a Snyder County landmark and inspired his current avocation.

Frustrated in his attempts to find period lighting for his home ("I just couldn't get past the dimmer switches," he says), Malaney decided to do it himself. But for him, DIY didn't mean frequenting home-improvement warehouses, but accumulating 200-year-old hand tools and learning a long-obsolete trade.

Malaney's previous career path had included a history degree from Penn State, land-title work, various managerial positions he prefers not to mention, and a stint as a restaurateur. His degree and land-title experience prepared him for the extensive research involved in accurately dating and restoring his home and its additions, and in determining probable uses for the tools he began to acquire.

At auctions and public sales, he purchased hand-jennies, stake plates and even a few apparently improvised mystery tools. In trade for a piece in his own collection, he apprenticed himself to learn smithing techniques.

Then, in 1987, the newly transformed master tinsmith opened a workshop adjoining his home. There he hammers, creases, polishes and pierces sheets of tin, painstakingly creating Colonial-era reproduction lighting.

His business, Old Stone House Lighting, and his wares have since been featured in national magazines and restoration source books. In 1999, he was commissioned to create ornaments for the White House Christmas tree. He has made a name for himself by, as he calls it, "honoring the old ways."

In the early days of cultivating his tinsmith persona, Malaney grew a ponytail for catalog photos of him at work. Both a romantic and a preservationist, after the photo shoot, he cut off the ponytail, and presented it to wife-to-be, Noreen, packaged in a vintage piano roll box and accompanied by a rose. This is one tin man who definitely isn't lacking a heart.

Old Stone House Lighting ~ 28 E. Market St., Middleburg; (800) 923-2260

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