Catoctin Furnace hosts iron festival to showcase historic trade, art form
Sparks and flames were starting to shoot out of an iron furnace Sunday afternoon as a team of ironworkers started adding coal and iron.
The team, covered head to toe in protective leather gear, had been heating up the furnace since Sunday morning to get around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the Maryland Iron Festival to demonstrate an iron pour.
A crowd started forming around noon, and about 40 minutes later — when molten iron flowed from the furnace — there was a collective sound of awe.
The annual festival at Catoctin Furnace has been showcasing ironworking and its history in the area for the last several years, said Susan Ciaverelli, a volunteer with the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society.
The festival grows each year, she said. Most people think of crabs or horse racing when they think of Maryland, but ironworking was a huge part of Maryland’s history.
“It’s good for them to know about Maryland’s historic, industrial past and the work of free and enslaved workers who toiled here in this really dirty, difficult industry that kind of helped build America, helped us win our freedom, really, from England,” she said.
The festival had all sorts of attractions, including historical buildings to visit and interactive activities related to ironworking. There was an anvil people could attempt to raise with a rope or cannonballs to see how far people could throw them.
Members with Hopewell Furnace, in Pennsylvania, had a plaster casting that mimicked the skilled art of molding iron plates for 10-plate stoves. A blacksmith’s cabin displayed various blacksmiths at work.
Richard Doody was securing an iron bar on a leg vice to start shaping a horse’s head on the bar for a bottle opener.
But the pièce-de-résistance was the iron pour.
All of the people working the furnace, which is lovingly dubbed “Phil-us” are a collective who simply learned ironworking and are passionate about it, said Alyssa Imes-Welty, one of the ironworkers.
They go around doing demonstration pours, as well as production pours, which are more artistic, she said.
The United States was built on ironworking, she said, but it’s also a lost art form. Part of the demonstration is to bring it back to life, she said, and show the effort it took to produce even for a small pour.
On Sunday, she was with a team of about eight people.
“You can imagine a long time ago when the furnaces were run, hundreds of people to run those big ones and so kind of shows you the importance of ... a collective. ... This can’t be done by myself,” she said.
Sara Schubert and her daughter, also Sara Schubert, came to the festival because the elder Sara Schubert’s father was a foundryman.
Coming to the festival on Sunday was a reminder of her memories of him, she said.
But it was also a reminder of broader historical ideas, the younger Sara Schubert said.
“It’s a reminder, I guess of how things used to be and how hard it used to be to get to metal work items,” she said.
“And to appreciate what we have and not taking everything for granted,” the elder Schubert said.
Patrick Gill, a blacksmith, was another demonstrator and a vendor at the festival. It was his third year at the festival, he said. He’s been a blacksmith for 15 years, he said, after falling in love with the craft as a boy scout.
Demonstrating the festival is a way of preserving history and raising awareness of historic arts and trades, he said.
“I think it’s really important to keep people aware that this is something that can still be done. It’s not something stuck in the past,” he said.
Gill said he’s a teacher, so he loves exposing his passion with the youth, and hopes to inspire them to pursue a creative passion.
The Stromberg family had decided to check out the festival on Sunday since they were camping in the area, Olivia Stromberg said. It was nice to do things outside that were also educational, she said.
Eitan Stromberg also said the festival, and those that are similar, were important because they were a way of “bringing the past to life.”
