Liam Butler interviews Nelson’s Iron Lady

Liam Butler interviews Gail Collingwood, Nelson’s Iron Lady.

Liam Butler

Gail, you are known in Nelson for your tireless community service and astute governance. You are also a big fan of Irons. Tell me more...

Do you own an iron?

Do you iron your clothes?

Well I own around 500 irons, some are really old. Some are smaller than 50 cm and some are very big about 30 cm and heavy, most of them are black and dirty. Usually I only use an iron when I need something to wear. So why do I have all these irons?

Way back in the 70's my dear husband came home from a weekend job, the one that helped pay the mortgage, with a gift. What else would you take home to a young mum with two beautiful daughters - a rusty, no 6 Siddons flat iron - the kind shaped like your iron but with a metal handle and really hot to hold.

The next morning the old man next door called in. Shouting at me because of a hearing loss "What are you going to do with that?" I shouted back, I don't know.

I'll go home and get my mother's iron then you can have some book ends. Good idea I shouted at least bookends have a use.

So overnight there were two, and after a visit to an auction four and then there were 10. They were all different, different sizes, shapes, weights some had wooden/cold handles, and some were heated by gas or charcoal or ingots metal wedges. Some were specialist irons - goffering and fluting irons

I started talking to antique dealers and collectors and found others in Nelson had irons. Then I heard about people throughout the country, Australia, England and America who had collections of irons, iron stands and laundry type stuff washing boards, reckits blue, and sunlight soap. There were specialists books I could buy and clubs I could join. I found the world was alive with these collectors.

Maybe I had been hasty and looking a gift iron in the mouth, the iron from the Siddons Foundry in Scotland was not looking so silly or dirty after all. The house keeping money was stretched like elastic as 10 grew to 20 along with matching trivets. I joined overseas iron clubs, learnt heaps, found EBay, and over time have attended international meetings in Britain, Cleveland Ohio, Geneva and Romania - made great friendships, visited collections everywhere and shown people our patch of paradise.

I learnt some irons banished to the garage were really worthy - one iron stand is said to be designed by Christopher Dresser and now more prominently displayed.

Some of the irons came with their own heart warming story - like the specially cast matched pair given as a wedding present to a worker in a Falkirk foundry. Matched irons for a wedding present and some of you may not even own one!

Most of my irons were bought to NZ by early settlers - and I'm sure they have story or two they could tell.

NZ also produced irons; the Shacklock Company in Dunedin made irons and stoves for heating irons for hospital laundries and wonderful Chinese laundries.

The Chinese laundry made just the best job of starching and pressing the shine into the front of a dress shirt, there are fantastic purpose built polishing irons with a smooth curved base to do this.

NZ has our own iron designer, Helen Garden Moore of Masterton who lived on Flat Point Station got fed up with her iron in the 1890's and designed an improved one to prevent creasing and marking the heavily gathered sleeves of her blouses. Helen was granted two patents in 1899 for her Hinemoa iron, one in Britain and one in NZ - and until 2012 when I researched her little was known about her iron, not even by her family.

In fact the few known examples of the Hinemoa are in NZ, one in Australia and one in Britain

My iron gift turned into an obsession, took me to places I never dreamt I would go to especially Romania to see 5000 of the 25.000 irons collected over 10 years. (Since the iron curtain was lifted) I have a great deal to be thankful for when I look at my irons dusty as they are and remember that my dear husband and my elderly neighbour kindly started the whole collection with their gifts.

ends

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