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Stunning Double Floating Helical Stairs
UPDATE 4-27-2017 This project won Gold in the National Top Job competition. Other entries were elegant, contemporary, and very modern. Each had it’s own details and specific obstacles to over come and the finish projects worked well with the rest of the design of the homes they were installed in. A very tough competition! What garnered this…
Read MoreLOVE Sculpture
The LOVE sculpture is quite popular, and a wedding facility wanted this for the bride and groom to take photos, or the entire wedding party to drape themselves over this exceptional scupture. Created out of 3/16″ aluminum plate 3 ft. deep, 6 ft. wide and 6 ft. high, the color scheme was Phillies Red, Eagles…
Read MoreCaptivating Bar Rail
The client wanted a bar rail to match their Iron grills we had made for the wine cellar doors. To keep the same visual dimension, they wanted 1-1/2” square solid bar twisted as tight as possible. The challenge was to radius the square twisted bar to fit the bar radius. It was impossible to radius it…
Read MoreExceptional Spiral Staircase
An exceptional shore home required double floating helical stairs, to suit the client’s desire of “A stair like nothing else in the world.” There also was a need for a set of double spiral stairs in the back of the house as well. One goal of Compass Ironwork is to meet or exceed client’s expectations. So instead…
Read MoreHeart Design Sculpture
Sometimes we get to work on unusual projects that belong in the “sculpture” category. A past client wanted a heart sculpture for a photo op at a wedding facility for the bride and groom. The design team selected this intertwining heart. They loved the abstract lines with all the movement of the various surfaces. We…
Read MoreCutting Edge Contemporary Railing, both Traditional and Non-Traditional
These photos are of a contemporary railing utilizing traditional Iron alloy, and with ages old method of blackening and renaissance wax. The designs also called for scale texture to be visible, which in some pieces was natural and for some pieces we had to create intentionally for it to be harmonious. Bottom photos are polished stainless…
Read MoreBeautiful Forged Ironwork on New Entry Doors
Back in the summer, Stein-Houck approached us about the possibility of incorporating Iron in this beautiful Entryway. We huddled with the contractor and door craftsmen and collaboratively came up with an aggressive schedule that would provide installation of complete entry doors in time for decorating for the holidays. All collaboration was done through CAD so…
Read MoreElegant Glass and Steel Stairs
We are hard at work on a sleek all-glass stair project with saw tooth stringers. We went through a four-month design and engineering process to come up with this configuration to satisfy the particular needs of the client. Construction of the steel frame in our shop is well under way, as you can see from…
Read MoreThe Mouse House Pergola Refurbishing
The Mouse House was originally built as a carriage house around 1900. Olga Hirshorn was the widow of Joesph Hirshorn, who accumulated one of the largest art collections of the 20thcentury and whose collection filled 197,000 sq. ft. in the Hirshorn Museum in Washington, DC. Olga used the Mouse House as her pied-a-terre and fit…
Read MoreOur Finish Withstood 20,000 Salt Spray Hours in the Lab
For years, here at Compass Ironworks, we had relied on outside testing labs to provide us feedback on the durability of our powder coat finishes, especially as it pertains to the harsh elements at the shore. In 2013, Compass created our own in-house salt spray testing within the guidelines of ASTM B-117, but with added…
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