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Originally Posted by Zigûr
Well Eöl was certainly "stooped by his smithwork" but he was disdained by Curufin as a "Dark Elf" rather than for other apparent reasons, at least as far as I can see.
Also, I don't think other Elf nobles would have looked down on smithcraft; at least the Noldor would not have done, as Fëanor was the greatest craftsman of their people and also King for a time and held in high esteem.
Furthermore, many Elves didn't just go underground but lived underground as a matter of course, if usually for defensive purposes, and that included Noldor like Finrod in Nargothrond as well as "Dark" Elves like Thingol and Thranduil.
The Silmarillion does state, however, that Eöl often took Maeglin to the mansions of the Dwarves in Ered Luin where he learned "the craft of finding the ores of metals in the mountains," so perhaps such skills were not necessarily common among Elves; but they had to have been common enough that the craftsmen of Turgon could delve their own mines in the Encircling Mountains, unless those mines were not delved until after Maeglin came to Gondolin.
It just seems very unlikely to me that Elves never acquired metal for themselves on their own. Not all Elves were noblemen of high station and many must surely have done fairly "ordinary" work, albeit probably in a superior, Elvish way.
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Yes I'm not suggesting they never would. The case of isolated Gondolin is clear proof of that. Even in The Undying Lands there must've been Elvish mines - no Dwarves over there but the Firstborn still worked with metal. I do think that
most Elves would
probably prefer to buy ore and smithy-work from the Dwarves because they didn't want to dirty their fingernails in the mines and because the Dwarves were the best in the business.
I'm going by memory here but I suppose I might be reading too much into that Eöl was 'stooped' by his work. That this crookedness would be a reflection not only of his physical shape but also of his soul. His son Maeglin, the most wicked of all Elves, was of course also a keen miner something I can't help but to connect.