Ironing clothing was not sissy’s work in the old days. In the Museum, you will find a variety of vintage flat irons. Most are quite heavy (our tailor’s iron weighs 18 lbs!) and had to be heated on a nearby stove. This style of clothes iron was invented long before Silver Reef was a town but was still in use by many housewives and in the Chinese-run laundries. One term for these was “sad” irons, sad meaning “solid” in Middle English.
Some vintage irons are called “box irons.” They are hollow so that live coals could be piled inside to provide the heat. The iron pictured here is a “fuel iron” from the early 1900s, so was invented after the heyday of Silver Reef. You can see a container on the back which was filled with gasoline or kerosene. When this fuel was ignited, it provided the iron’s heat. It seems that the mundane job of pressing clothing was a hard, sometimes risky business for our ancestors.
You can find other early household items on display at the Silver Reef Museum.
