Sad Irons

October 11, 2020 1:26 PM

For McCartney, irons are not just the story of American invention. They also illustrate how technology was used to help people stay abreast of—some might say “conform to”—the social conventions of the day. Just as a band of red in the side of a sandstone cliff might indicate the presence of iron ore, McCartney’s irons are evidence of a time when ironed clothing was a sign of social status, long before the arrival of permanent-press fabrics or—heaven forfend!—shirts designed to be worn untucked. Simply put, people spent an enormous amount of their time ironing. From Sad Iron Man: A Maine Geologist Wants You To Know How We Used to Press Our Clothes
posted by chavenet (11 comments total)

Simply put, people spent an enormous amount of their time ironing.
And by 'people', we mean women.
posted by MtDewd at 2:49 PM on October 11, 2020 [21 favorites]

My grandparents sent all six of their children to a Catholic school that required their uniforms to be freshly pressed each day. As I understand it my grandmother spent at least a couple hours a day ironing. And in their neighborhood six kids was a modest-sized family! I guess I'm glad at least she had an electric iron...though one wonders if kids were expected to show up in freshly pressed duds in the days before electricity or if that was an artifact of goalpost-moving due to the relative convenience of a modern electric iron.
posted by potrzebie at 2:57 PM on October 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Ironing the seams of clothes kills lice and their eggs, ironing bedding was thought to kill bedbugs - and definitely got the sheets actually dry, otherwise difficult. And steaming wool back into shape helps it hang with less strain and last longer. It wasn’t all display, a surprising amount of it was maintenance.

As far as I know goffering was entirely display. Wow, that crank machine!

At least one parish-scale solar installation in a previously off grid town I’ve heard of in the last twenty years discovered that there was a huge latent desire to iron. Inconveniently everyone wanted to iron right before the same public occasions, which was impossible to load-balance.
posted by clew at 3:15 PM on October 11, 2020 [17 favorites]

Those are lovely photographs.

I had an older friend, in her eighties, when I volunteered at a used book store in the 90s. She told me about when she was a child, her neighbor would iron the newspaper and dollar bills For her husband. “That’s class”, she said.
posted by bq at 3:47 PM on October 11, 2020 [4 favorites]

Jeeves ironed Bertie’s newspaper, I think.
posted by clew at 4:48 PM on October 11, 2020 [4 favorites]

Until fairly recently newspaper ink would stain one's hands and clothing, unless one had the newspaper ironed before reading.
posted by monotreme at 4:52 PM on October 11, 2020 [4 favorites]

More Work For Mother: The Ironies Of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave
by Ruth Cowan
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:06 PM on October 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

Ironing's also essential if you're repairing clothes, or sewing them, which are also disappeared habits; cheaply available, effectively disposable, mass-market clothes are much more recent than we think.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:21 PM on October 11, 2020 [4 favorites]

I press seams and pleats when I sew. That's pretty much the only thing I've used an iron for in the past... several decades. Except for the occasional ironing of a formal shirt, which happened about once a year in the Before Times and now happens about zero times a year.

I still wear clothing made of fibres that wrinkle; I just don't care that it's wrinkled.
posted by confluency at 5:28 AM on October 12, 2020

Grandma had four or five sad irons of different sizes that sat on the shelf over her woodstove, all with their corresponding trivets. I've long regretted that I never asked her to let me try one, just so I could say I'd done it.

By the time my mother was old enough to help with the laundry, they'd chucked in the stove-heated irons for electric, but most everything still had to be ironed. As mentioned in the article, even sheets had to be ironed - they were all cotton and dried with wrinkles even on sunny days. But in wet or cold weather, it was the only way to make sure they were completely dry before putting them away. They had a rotary electric ironer for big jobs like that.

I iron when I sew, and I ironed a lot more when I didn't have access to a tumble dryer, but I also just enjoy ironing. It's like creating order our of chaos. I would love one of the fancy-schmancy irons some of my more hifalutin sewing friends have, with all the bells and whistles. One of their irons have little feet that pop out and raise the iron off the cloth if it senses you've left it on too long. And I'd love a chance to try a vintage Pyrex electric iron.

Anyway, I've subscribed to this guy's youtube channel, and I hope he gets around to making more videos!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:01 PM on October 12, 2020

Tangentially related, but I also love this video of an antique hand-cranked machine for pleating the coifs Benedictine nuns used to wear.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:04 PM on October 12, 2020 [1 favorite]