The Schill Brothers Co. Cast Iron Stove Emblem
SSC MUSEUM COLLECTION
Catalog No. SSC-SCHILL-EMBLEM-c1900-001
The Schill Brothers Co. Cast Iron Stove Emblem
Stoves, Furnaces & Ranges | Crestline, Ohio | Identification Emblem
Circa 1892–1920s • The Schill Brothers Co. • Crestline, Ohio
Obverse face showing raised lettering reading “THE SCHILL BROTHERS CO / CRESTLINE, OHIO” arranged vertically within the elongated oval form, with a single central mounting hole. The casting is clean and the lettering fully legible despite surface oxidation.
Crestline, Ohio is a railroad town. When the Pennsylvania Railroad built its locomotive shops and repair facilities there in the 1850s, they created the economic engine that would sustain Crawford County’s small industries for the next half century. The Schill Brothers Company, founded in 1892, was one of those industries—a manufacturer of stoves, furnaces, and ranges that operated within walking distance of the PRR shops and sold its products into a market shaped by the same rail network that made Crestline possible. This cast iron identification emblem is what the Schill Brothers attached to their work to tell the world who made it and where they stood.
The piece entered the SSC collection on February 26, 2026, as catalog number SSC-SCHILL-EMBLEM-c1900-001. It is a narrow elongated oval of cast iron—approximately six inches long, roughly an inch and a half wide—with raised lettering reading “THE SCHILL BROTHERS CO” across the upper field and “CRESTLINE, OHIO” across the lower field, separated by a single central mounting hole. The reverse is plain, undecorated cast iron. The piece is in good condition with surface oxidation throughout and all lettering fully legible. It is the SSC collection’s second confirmed Ohio stove and furnace emblem, and its first piece from Crawford County.
Piece Details
Reverse face showing the plain undecorated cast iron back with a single central mounting hole visible as a small circular depression. The surface shows uniform oxidation consistent with age and indoor installation use.
Manufacturer
The Schill Brothers Co.
Location
Crestline, Ohio
Object Type
Cast Iron Stove / Furnace Identification Emblem
Founded
1892 (confirmed; referenced in trade press through early 1920s)
Product Line
Stoves, Furnaces, and Ranges
Approximate Date
c. 1892–1920s (consistent with documented operating period)
Condition
Good — raised lettering fully legible, surface oxidation throughout, no cracks or breaks
SSC Catalog No.
SSC-SCHILL-EMBLEM-c1900-001
Acquisition
eBay, seller janau-39 — February 26, 2026 — $32.00 + $8.00 shipping + $3.39 tax = $43.39 total
What It Is
This is a cast iron identification emblem manufactured for permanent attachment to a Schill Brothers stove, furnace, or range. Unlike the architectural Gothic arch nameplates common to larger furnace manufacturers, this emblem is compact and utilitarian in form—an elongated oval designed to be screwed flat against a stove body or range panel where it would identify the manufacturer to any person who looked closely at the appliance. The single central mounting hole indicates a single-screw installation, which was standard for smaller identification plates of this type.
The form itself is clean and understated. There is no decorative surround, no ornamental border, no figurative element. The lettering does all the work: “THE SCHILL BROTHERS CO” in the upper register, “CRESTLINE, OHIO” in the lower, the period-standard serif capitals rendered in moderate relief against the oval ground. The oval form with rounded ends—a stadium or discorectangle shape—was commonly used for stove and range identification hardware in the period, offering a compact footprint that could be positioned on a door panel, side panel, or lower register of an appliance without intruding on functional surfaces.
The inclusion of “OHIO” rather than just “CRESTLINE” is significant: it confirms that Schill Brothers expected their appliances to travel beyond the immediate local market. An emblem legible only to neighbors would not need a state identifier. The state name was put there for customers in Columbus, Cleveland, Toledo, and beyond—the regional market that the Pennsylvania Railroad made accessible from Crestline.
Crestline and The Schill Brothers Company
Crestline sits at the center of north-central Ohio, in Crawford County, at a junction of rail lines that made it one of the most strategically located small cities in the state. The Pennsylvania Railroad’s locomotive shops were the largest employer, but the rail hub attracted ancillary industry: hardware dealers, foundries, and manufacturers who could receive raw materials and ship finished goods with unusual efficiency for a town of its size. The Schill Brothers Company was founded in this environment in 1892, entering the stove and furnace market at the height of its competitive intensity.
Documentary evidence for the company spans three decades. A 1904 letterhead documents the full product line: furnaces, stoves, and ranges. A 1901 salesman’s sample of their Furnace No. 21, branded “New Idea,” survives in the collector market, indicating that Schill Brothers used salesman sampling—the standard sales method of the period—to reach hardware dealers and heating contractors across their regional territory. The company was referenced in the trade press as early as April 1902 in The Metal Worker, and continued to appear in American Artisan & Hardware Record as late as December 1922, confirming an operating span of at least thirty years.
Postcards from the early 1900s show the Schill Furnace Works as a recognizable industrial landmark in Crestline, photographed alongside the Pennsylvania Railroad shops as one of the town’s defining industrial features. That kind of physical visibility—a factory prominent enough to appear on a postcard sold to tourists and residents—indicates an operation of real scale for a small-city manufacturer. The Schill Brothers were not a backyard foundry. They were Crestline’s stove industry.
The cast iron paperweight produced by Schill Brothers in the 1920s—a nickel-plated triangular piece reading “SCHILL BROS. CO / CRESTLINE OHIO / STOVES & FURNACES”—represents the company’s later advertising strategy, when cast iron promotional items were distributed to dealers and customers as brand reminders. The identification emblem in the SSC collection represents the earlier, utilitarian phase of that same brand identity: not an advertisement, but a mark of origin, cast into the product itself.
Why This Piece Matters
The Schill Brothers emblem matters first because it is a confirmed Ohio piece from a documented Ohio manufacturer—the kind of direct provenance that makes an industrial artifact collectible in the strictest sense of the word. Unlike the Brand’s Famous Furnaces nameplate acquired the day before, which raises questions it cannot answer, this emblem names a company with a thirty-year documentary record, a known Crestline address, a surviving factory photograph, and artifacts in multiple collections. The SSC catalog entry for this piece is not a beginning of research; it is a contribution to an existing record.
It matters for the Ohio Foundry Heritage Collection because Crawford County is underrepresented in the SSC collection relative to the major Ohio foundry centers—Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, Cincinnati. Crestline’s stove industry occupied a different tier of the Ohio cast iron economy: regional rather than national, railroad-dependent rather than river-dependent, specializing in residential heating hardware rather than cookware. Adding this piece extends the collection’s geographic range within Ohio and adds a manufacturer whose relationship to the Ohio Foundry Corridor ran through the Pennsylvania Railroad rather than the Miami and Erie Canal.
It matters as an object because it is honest about what it is. There is no rhetorical excess here, no “Famous” or “The Leading Brand.” The Schill Brothers put their name and their city on the iron and let that stand. That restraint is itself a period document—a company confident enough in its regional identity to let the place name do the work.
Sources & Further Reading
MyCompanies Wiki — Schill Brothers Company entry: confirmed founding date 1892, product categories (Furnaces; Stoves & Ranges), and trade press citations.
The Metal Worker, April 5, 1902 — earliest confirmed trade press citation for Schill Brothers Co.
American Artisan & Hardware Record — citations May 6, 1916; October 2, 1920; December 30, 1922: documents active trading period through early 1920s.
WorthPoint.com — 1920s Schill Bros. nickel-plated cast iron advertising paperweight; 1901 Schill Bros. Furnace No. 21 “New Idea” salesman sample; 1904 Schill Brothers letterhead: product line and promotional materials documentation.
eBay RPPC listings — “A View Of The Schill Brothers Company, Crestline, Ohio” and “The Schill Furnace Works & The P.R.R. Shops, Crestline, Ohio”: factory photography establishing physical scale and railroad adjacency.
SSC Internal Collection Records — Ohio Foundry Heritage Collection: SSC-TOLEDO-001 (Union Mfg. Co. of Toledo), SSC-HL-LADLE-1871-001 (M. Hose & Lyon, Dayton), SSC-BRAND-PLATE-c1890-001 (Brand’s Famous Furnaces).
About Steve’s Seasoned Classics
Steve’s Seasoned Classics is an online museum dedicated to preserving and documenting the heritage of American cast iron, with a focus on Ohio foundry pieces from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The SSC collection features over 60 pieces with detailed provenance, historical research, and photography for each item.
