![]() ![]() ![]() Of course, it also can be used as a trivet for a hot dish. With their flat sides, they are perfect for setting something on – like a plant, a bowl of fruit or a vignette of old bottles and flowers. My husband’s mother remembers her mother, Esther, using one which would be sometime in the 1940s to 50s.Īfter my research, I started playing around with the trivets, exploring different ways they could be used on the vintage table. Seeley but since many rural homes did not have electricity for many decades following his invention and the many improvements thereafter, sad irons were commonly used in rural America up to the 1950s. In 1882 an “electric sadiron” was invented by Henry W. With two irons on the stove or fire, the person could quickly exchange the cooled iron for a hot one. Sets of 3 irons with one handle hit the post-Civil War market. Then she introduced a model, which she patented, with a detachable handle. Both are very heavy! Also below is a stack of vintage iron trivets.Ī breakthrough in ironing was made when Mary Florence Potts invented the sad iron that was pointed on both ends. In our vintage decor collection at Southern Vintage Table we have this sad iron with “Jakes” on the handle and an early electric model with an indistinguishable label. By the way, “sad” doesn’t mean you were unhappy when ironing although it was a hard, hot and even dangerous task back then it is the old English word for solid. Moving this hot piece of iron over the cloth became known as “ironing.” A companion piece to the sad iron was an iron trivet, a metal stand to set the iron on when hot. Along came “sad” irons, solid handled pieces of iron that when heated over a hot fire, could smooth fabrics. After the English traveled to China and saw that heat helped to de-wrinkle, they started using heated utensils. Before then, people used a variety of other things like stones, wood, glass and even bone. The word “iron” wasn’t used until the “de-wrinkling” instrument was made from the metal, iron. ![]() According to Collectors’ Weekly Sad and Flat Irons, it turns out vintage irons and iron trivets are a part of a long history of people wanting their clothes and linens to be smooth and unwrinkled, dating as far back as first century BC. Last week a set of vintage iron trivets was shared with Southern Vintage Table and as I was imagining how they could be used as vintage decor, I wanted first to learn about them. Have you ever had a “a-ha” moment about a word you have used all of your life but didn’t really think about where it came from? Recently I did with the words “iron” and “ironing”. ![]()
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