Hercules Anchor Co. Patented Sad Iron

The Hercules Anchor Co. of Toledo, Ohio manufactured pressing irons in the early twentieth century. This size 2 patented sad iron — bearing the patent date August 4, 1903 and the full maker cartouche "Hercules Anchor Co. / Toledo / Ohio" — is a product of the same Ohio manufacturing tradition that produced the hollow ware in the SSC collection, expressed in a different form: not a skillet, but a tool for domestic labor, cast from the same gray iron, by an Ohio foundry whose history has not yet been fully written. The Hercules Anchor Co. does not appear in standard cast iron references. This piece is one of the primary physical records of its existence.