It's OK if you think the guy looks like a punk guitarist, with his scouring pad beard, mussed-up hair and tattooed extremities. Because, having played in a couple of local bands (you never heard of Shay's Rebellion? Choke City?), Peter Lambert is, in fact, a bit of a punk guitarist. But it's not his best instrument -- for a virtuoso heavy-metal performance, you ought to see him rock out with a hammer and anvil.

He's a rock star of a blacksmith, so much as that sort of thing is possible, designing and fabricating high-end wine cellars, fireplace screens, cocktail tables for the rich and famous, or in many cases the merely rich. He and his team of metal workers built the ubiquitous "three rivers" bike racks that can be seen all over the city, the decorative metal grapevines behind the bar at Sonoma Grille, the boat racks on the North Shore riverfront.

In other words you've probably seen his work -- without realizing it -- if you've ever eaten out, walked through Downtown or frankly left your house in the past five years (or intend to leave it in the next 50).

"That's one of the great things about iron work. Corny as it may sound, [you're] going to leave this work behind you. And it's going to be here for years. It's your responsibility as a craftsman to send it on its way as best you can," he said.

Today, he's receiving an award from the U.S. Small Business Administration -- Mr. Lambert, 27, is Western Pennsylvania's young entrepreneur of the year. "I never walked down the aisle with a cap and gown on … so it's a nice kind of feather to tuck in the cap."

One of his caps, anyway -- as the young owner of a young business, Red Star Ironworks in Millvale, he wears a lot of hats. Artist. Designer. Fabricator. President and CEO (although he prefers thinking of himself as first among equals, and of Red Star not so much a boss-employee organization as a business commune, which explains the red star imagery).

"He's definitely excellent at his trade," said Ray Vargo, interim director at the University of Pittsburgh's Small Business Development Center, which has ben counseling Mr. Lambert for half a year.

But excelling at the business end of things requires a different knowledge set, Mr. Vargo said.

He didn't acquire that knowledge the "traditional" way, with a high school diploma and a secondary education. He dropped out of Alderdice High School at the end of 10th grade, 15 years old and certain of little beyond his love of art and the outdoors (his father, Mike, is head of the Three Rivers Rowing Association).

It happened that furniture artist and metal worker Ray Appleby, now the owner of Technique Architectural Product, was a friend of the family. With a mentor, Mr. Lambert learned the skills of the trade.

"He's certainly a quick learner," Mr. Appleby said. "After he left, once he started doing his own thing, he really just blossomed and took off."

Mr. Lambert later earned his welding certification from Allegheny County Community College, worked for a year as a freelance mobile welder, and eventually caught on with John Walter, owner of Iron Eden metal shop in Bloomfield.

There, Mr. Lambert met Ed Parish, and by 2001, the pair decided to start their own business (Mr. Parish, still a metal worker, has since left Red Star).

"I remember hearing [news that he was dropping out of school] and thinking, 'Oh that's interesting -- we'll see if that works,'" said Mr. Lambert's older sister, Emily Noelle. "I work in the schools, and I see that kids that don't quite fit into the system that school provided." Her brother, she said, thrived outside of that system, "and he found this thing that he's able to create with, to make money with."

For a first-time business owner, the money side of the business can be daunting. Not just meeting payroll each month, but also, for example, lining up financing to purchase real estate (Mr. Lambert hopes to buy the building that Red Star is now leasing) or even buying tools and machinery.

"When you're young, you have a limited credit history," Mr. Vargo said, necessitating not only the use of traditional bank loans, but also government loans and grants designated for small businesses.

But the fact that Mr. Lambert is even talking about buying Red Star's warehouse home demonstrates the growth of the business since he first hung a shingle, in 2001. Back then, operating out of an Oakland garage, then a Garfield storefront, Mr. Lambert was surviving from project to project. "The toughest thing about it is that this is an expensive business to be in," especially with no start-up capital to speak of, Mr. Lambert said.

"All the tools we bought, we bought with a down payment from the next project. We constantly just rolled it over." He accepted any and all jobs, from window guards to truck racks.

Today, Red Star -- with nine employees, $450,000 in sales and 40 or so projects a year -- can be more selective, charging $2,000 for a table, and many times that for the elaborate fence work and room dividers that he and his crew have built for the likes of Pittsburgh actor David Conrad.

Mr. Conrad wanted the hinged fence to look as if it had been built 80 years ago, browned and rusted, like it had been swiped from the doorway of an old building at Pitt.

"The thing I like about them is that they like to be challenged by stuff like that, they like to be challenged by design," said Mr. Conrad, who was matched with Mr. Lambert through a friend. "Pete, he's a good businessman, but he's a creative guy -- half hipster-slacker, and half hard-nosed, 'We're really, going to make this work as a business.'"

Thanks to his own music roots, and the acquaintances he's made through office manager and Mr. Roboto Project creator Mike Q. Roth, Mr. Lambert has been able to tap the progressive community of artists, actors, "scrubby graffiti kid" punk rockers and food-co-op-shopper-types for ideas and creative energy -- but not always for paying clients.

"Pittsburgh has an incredible arts community. But it doesn't have an art market. You can be an incredible painter, you can be a incredible sculptor, but you don't necessarily have a lot of patrons here," he said.

It's one of the reasons why his mother Cynthia, a painter, is now living in New Jersey and working for the South Jersey Cultural Alliance. It's one of the reasons sister Emily Noelle, also a painter, is making a living New York. It's easy to see where his love of art came from, but Mr. Lambert eventually realized that if he wanted to live in Pittsburgh, it would help if his brand of art did more than hang from a gallery wall.

"Americans," he said, "love functional objects."

Sixty percent of Red Star's work is residential, and while some of that is purely decorative, much of it is utilitarian -- fireplace screens, tables, staircases and sink pedestals.

Red Star seems to have forged a niche within a niche business, key in a line of work where mentors become competitors, an incestuous community where everybody knows everybody else. Red Star specializes in wrought iron and domestic design. Technique Architectural handles signage and large-scale stainless steel fabrication. Iron Eden does a lot of ornate garden fixtures. Metalier on Rialto Street specializes in jewelry and vases.

"You kind of make your own market," said Mr. Walter of Iron Eden. "You just do unusual stuff and hope people like it."

So far, people like what Red Star is doing, even if the company is in its formative years.

"Blacksmithing is a skill that takes a lifetime to learn," Mr. Lambert said. "We're still very, very much students here."

Others to be honored today are: small business journalist champion, Daniel R. Richey of The Northside Chronicle; minority small business champion, Brent G. Rondon of Global Business Programs; small businessperson of the year, Joseph G. Keller of Keller Engineers; women in business champion, Susan K. Breon of Center for eBusiness and Advanced IT; SCORE Volunteer of the Year, Don Carpenter; financial services, Dennis Piper of Dennis Piper and Associates; family-owned business of the year, J. Eric Sauereisen and C. Karl Sauereisen of Sauereisen specialty cements; veterans champion, Alan Smith of U.S. Representative Mike Doyle's office; woman-owned business, Amy Veltri of Novel Geo-Environmental in Bridgeville.