The Quick Meal advertising stand

This rare sad iron stand (7 x 5″ with 3 feet; 1561 on reverse) sold on eBay for $155.50 on 2/4/12 after 16 bids. What’s so unusual about it? Well, for starters, it was an advertising giveaway from the Ringen Stove Company of St. Louis, a division of the American Stove Company and maker of the Quick Meal line of wood burning and gas stoves.

According to the information below the stand probably dates to the turn of the century. As quoted from Wikipedia:

“In the 1850s, an immigrant to the United States John Ringen began a tinshop in St. Louis, Missouri. His business prospered and in 1870, he took in a partner, George August Kahle, who had immigrated to America in 1867. The business sold housewares, washing machines and cooking stoves they called “Quick Meals”. In 1881, George Kahle persuaded his brothers-in-law, Charles and Louis Stockstrom to set up a shop to make stoves. These four principals then organized two corporations, the Ringen Stove Company and the Quick Meal Stove Company.”

“Quick Meal manufactured the stoves with Ringen Stove handling the entire output of Quick Meal’s production. The phenomenal growth of these two companies during the 1880s and 1890s led to the merger of eight other stove companies in St. Louis, Chicago and Cleveland in 1901 to form the American Stove Company.”

To learn about actually using a Quick Meal stove, see Industrialist Cuisine: Slow Cooking on a Quick Meal from the blog Jet City Gastrophysics.

PS: See also my blog post on the very similar Clark Jewel advertising stand.

Update 7/16/19

Thanks to the following information received from fellow PITCA member Dennis McDonald, we now learn that the Quick Meal stand was actually the companion stand to the gas iron shown below, and dates to 1914-1915.

I think I found the gas iron that is married to this American Stove Co./Quick Meal/Ringen trivet.  I didn’t know the iron existed until I saw one sold on eBay in September 2014 ….. it sold for $165, just $10 more than the trivet; see iron pic attached. I’ve also found the G. B. Child & C. Munzner Sad Iron Patent No. 1,143,507 which was filed 7/27/1914 and issued 6/15/1915.

Update 3/18/21

A stove lid lifter was used to lift the circular openings on the top of a cast iron stove. This 8″ long antique nickel-plated cast iron stove lid lifter is in excellent condition. On face: QUICK MEAL. On reverse: D62. Circa late 1800s – early 1900s.