On June 17th Friday evening, we at Compass Ironworks opened our doors for the Client Appreciation Dinner. The tour started in the gallery area, view the plaques and awards including the 2016 Mitch Heitler Award for Excellence in Craftsmanship, the highest award achievable globally in our industry. Next, we viewed the Samuel Yellin gates, originally built in 1908, currently being refurbished. We viewed more estate gates, the gate hinge testing lab, and salt spray test chamber, then we began actual forging demonstrations. We showed texturing tulip petals on a power hammer, the forging of an actual three-dimensional tulip from a flat plate, hand hammering of Iron scrolls, and then the centuries old technique of hand-twisting a basket that has never ceased to amaze people with its simplicity.
We had a very delicious meal, by Bird-in-Hand Restaurant, including the ever-favorite ham balls. Dessert was Susie’s fresh Strawberry pies and homemade ice cream, churned by our antique John Deere Hit-and-Miss Engine.
After dinner, our silent auction, comprised of some specialty and forged items, closed, raising over $1,200 for the Clinic for Special Children.
The following morning, a bus tour started at Compass around 8:00, traveled to the Clinic For Special Children, where participants viewed the state of the art medical technology in a post and beam building, located in a bucolic setting in rural Lancaster County. From there, the bus traveled across the county. Our guides, Amos Glick, and Adam Heaps, pointed out sights and sharing interesting history, facts and stories from the Clinic and the local Amish and Mennonite communities.
We arrived at the benefit auction just in time for the Doctor’s Remarks, followed by the quilt auction. Some quilts sold ing the $3,000-4,000 range, but most averaged less than $1,000, and there were definitely some bargains. Furniture, crafts, sheds and all kinds of donated items from the local community kept all the auctioneers busy until around 4:00, when everything was sold. To some, it would have seemed as if the auctioneers were going at a frantic pace, but this was the normal pace for a Lancaster County benefit auction.
The bust traveled back to Compass in the afternoon after a very successful auction. The auction raised over $300,000 to support the Clinic for further research, treatment and to ease the suffering of children and their families all across the globe.
