Any old iron?
This household object has gone through many changes over the years, providing fascinating variation for collectors
OLD flat irons on the Antiques Roadshow? Come on BBC, that’s really scraping the barrel, isn’t it? You might have thought so too if, like us, you watched the programme filmed at the beautiful Helmingham Hall in Suffolk a couple of Sundays ago.
It soon became clear, though. It wasn’t just one iron, it was a whole suite of the things, together with the massive cast iron stove on which they would have been heated. Its lady owner said it had been rescued from a laundry in Sibton just up the road. The Tollemache family, who rebuilt Helmingham in 1510 and still own it, were probably one of its best customers.
Expert Hilary Kay was in her element. Somewhat younger than Helmingham, the stove was made by Chas. Portway and Son, of Halstead, Essex, a company which owned a patent for the design – trademark a tortoise with the slogan “Slow But Sure” – and dated probably from the turn of the century.
She valued it and the array irons of varying sizes festooned around it at £600-800, describing it as “telling a great story of social history”.
A couple of similar contraptions are pictured here, courtesy of Penny Savill of British Iron Collectors, a club whose members meet to buy, sell or swap antique laundry pressing irons and connected products. Their biannual magazine is called appropriately Pressing Matters.
Penny and her colleagues will be mounting an exhibition to promote the club and members’ collections at the Art & Antiques for Everyone fair at the NEC in November, so it’s a topic I hope to revisit nearer the time. In the meantime, appetite whetted, here are a few other ironing-related curiosities.
But first, don’t dismiss the humble flat, or “sad iron”. Given their popularity – every house had at least one – they are among the easiest of “antiques” to find and probably the cheapest. Sad, incidentally was a derivation of the medieval meaning of solid or heavy.
Apart from their intrinsic appeal, they make great doorstops, bookends and paperweights and come in a variety of styles and sizes, as indicated by the numbers embossed on them. And no, the small examples are not trade samples or for dolls’ houses. They were intended for ironing particularly delicate or intricate outfits.
While it’s hard to resist painting cast flat irons with gaudy coloured patterns, surfaces are protected from rust and value is enhanced by a covering of lacquer paint.
Stewart Hofgartner of Below Stairs, an antiques dealer and collector from Hungerford, started buying tradesmen’s tools and kitchen gadgets as a schoolboy with his wages from a paper round. You might have seen him on ITV’s Dickinson’s Real Deal. The pictures show some of his curiosities.
The so-called “Hot Cross” iron must have taken a certain amount of nerve to use because it is heated by a gas flame with the fuel being delivered by a pipe joined to the nozzle protruding from behind the handle.
The top plate of the cast iron body is embossed with the Maltese Cross logo, the name “Hot Cross” and “British Made”, “Patent”,”1” for the size.
The embossed registration number puts the design of the iron at 1904.
An earlier version was the “slug iron”, which had a gate at the rear which could be lifted to insert a red-hot slug of iron, while charcoal irons had a removable top plate to insert the fuel.
In a similar vein is the 1920s chrome-plated travelling iron, which would have been heated by using a methylated spirit tablet, placed on a pan under the body with the iron turned upside down. It’s called the “Asta” and was sold complete with a lilac-painted wooden travelling case.
While speaking of flat irons, it’s impossible to ignore the stands they would have been placed on to prevent them burning the house down. They come in a variety of metals and make a fascinating and inexpensive collection.
More correctly called trivets, many were homemade and include good luck symbols and slogans, while others were given as love tokens or wedding gifts.
Our all-time favourite irons, however, go by the name of goffering irons and they look like little hollow torpedoes on stands. They come in cast iron, which are utilitarian and basic, or brass, which are more fancy and imposing. Their purpose is to iron the waves of ruffs, pleats and frills, loved so much by followers of high fashion over three centuries.
Introduced from Italy in the 16th century and also called “tally irons”, they were heated by a bullet-shaped poker taken hot from the fire, which was inserted into the hollow barrel.
Once the heat had transferred to it, the damp, starched fabric of the ruff was drawn over the barrel until it was dried and stiffened to the required shape. Ruffs went out of fashion fairly quickly, but goffering irons continued to give indefatigable service until the end of the 19th century for finishing the ruffled edges of garments.
Housewives and laundresses using any of these irons needed a great deal of skill and strength. Experience was required to gauge exactly the right heat for a variety of fabrics (usually by spitting on it, or holding it close to a cheek!) and it was all too easy to dirty the newly-laundered fabric being ironed from ash or smuts from the heat source.
Keeping a number of irons at the right temperatures was also a skilled operation if time was not to be lost waiting for a cool iron to reheat, particularly so when a heated iron stove like the Roadshow example was in use.
A thick skin was also useful. The handle of a flat iron heated quickly as a result of conduction and became so unbearable that it had to be used with a cloth wrapped around it, dipped occasionally in cold water. Detachable wooden handles, an improvement fitted to flat irons in the 19th century, helped alleviate the problem.
Experience was required to gauge exactly the right heat for a variety of fabrics (usually by spitting on it, or holding it close to a cheek!)