For sale is an antique MRS POTTS SAD IRON No 8. This heavy cast iron is rust free. This iron is pitted and missing the removable wood handle. Iron measures about 6 1/2 inches in length. This iron is the perfect size for a paper weight or as display item for your kitchen.
Mary Florence Potts (September 1850 – 1922) was an American businessperson and inventor. She invented clothes irons with detachable wooden handles that became prominent throughout North America and the European continent. She termed herself an “inventress”. The most pronounced feature of Potts’s clothes iron was a detachable rounded wooden handle. That allowed the iron base to be placed on a heated stovetop and the handle removed at that time to stay away and cool while the base heated up. This prevented burned fingers, that often happened with the conventional all-solid-metal clothes iron of the nineteenth century. Her cold handle innovative clothes iron was a favorite item at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The American Manufacturing Company manufactured “Mrs. Potts’ sad iron,” from about 1876 until about 1951.
Sad irons, also called flat irons or smoothing irons, are shaped pieces of metal that are flat and polished on one side and have a handle attached to the other, created for the purpose of de-wrinkling fabric. “Sad” is an old English word for “solid,” and the term “sad iron” is often used to distinguish the largest and heaviest of flat irons, usually 5 to 9 pounds. The forebears to modern electric irons, flat irons are often triangular or come to a point to make it easier to iron around buttons. The heft of a sad iron would help it hold heat, as well as to press the fabric flat. To protect fabric and surfaces from singeing, sad irons often came with metal trivets to rest on. Sad irons are often-beautiful, intricate, and collectible examples of metalwork.
