Orr, Painter and Co. grill or plate found

[Eric Albright]

Greetings. I removed recently a portion of my kitchen wall (underneath an attic) and to my surprise and delight came across an iron faceplate of a sort, wrapped in an aged and crumbling newspaper discussing pensions in the time period between 1920 and 1923 and wanted ads for stenographers under "female employment" on the reverse. The plate is stamped with "ORR, Painter and Co." and has foundry numbers on both the name plate and surrounding grill on the back. From what I understand, the foundry, based in Reading, PA was established in 1863 and changed to Prizer Painter in 1899. A cursory search of stoves and products by this company via Google doesn't seem to have produced any images resembling my found piece. Any further information on its origin and function would be most appreciated. Thanks.

[C. Perry Rapier]

Hello Eric. Welcome to WAGS. I see this is your first post. We have some folks on here who collect Orr, Painter, and Co. I believe what you have there is from a stove. They made fancy stoves that were pleasing to the eye as well as performing their intended purpose. Thats a nice find indeed. Somebody else thought it was also a very nice piece worth saving. Congratulations.  :)

[Eric Albright]

Thank you. I'm still getting used to the fact that I found it in the wall where we cook and pass through every day. I'm no expert, but the craftmanship looks elegant and clean for something stamped perhaps 150 years ago. Any ideas where I might begin to look for a history of Orr's production line to nail down the particular stove model?

[C. Perry Rapier]

Thank you. I'm still getting used to the fact that I found it in the wall where we cook and pass through every day. I'm no expert, but the craftmanship looks elegant and clean for something stamped perhaps 150 years ago. Any ideas where I might begin to look for a history of Orr's production line to nail down the particular stove model?

Hello Eric. This piece was cast, so not 'stamped'. So a pattern was used to make a mold and the mold filled with hot molten metal. Stovemakers had to have and maintain a huge inventory of patterns. I would probably just start with Google and follow that up. As part of our website we collect, store, and maintain, information on several foundries, hundreds. When a new piece turns up that we don't have for a particular foundry we save that pic and then download it into our foundry files. And to be sure, all of that information is stored in what we call the 'dark side'. We have a public part of our forum/website that we are on right here. And there is another part of our website that is quite extensive and included the information that I just described. And when somebody doing a google search turns up new information we use that for our files as well. So everything that we have has been collected and stored by members of the group, which is called 'WAGS', Wagner and Griswold Society. Hope that information is helpful.  :)

[James Mummert]

Eric
The part you have is an outer oven shelf that goes to either a range or cook stove , maybe from an Othello range or Othello cook stove.  I can not put a date on it, though it was probally made from the 1890's  to  1910.  There are other early range  and cook stoves made by O P & Co. that  it maybe from.  It's hard to find closeup pictures of that part of the stoves.
  It fits right below the oven door.
James

[Eric Albright]

Thanks for replying. My knowledge of iron stoves and foundry methods has ensued almost from the moment I extracted this component from my wall. So I understand that in layman's terms, it is like a horizontally-oriented tray insert before an oven door--I've seen a few examples of these on other iron stoves. Something designed to be easily removed. I was puzzled that it had wedges protruding as if for hinges, but any holes for bolts or hooks were absent. I will keep at the Google searching and let it be known here if I find a match.

[Eric Albright]

Or it is exactly like a shelf for resting pots and such, as James mentioned, as this other stove has below its largest front door.

[C. Perry Rapier]

Hello Eric. Are these your stoves pictured here? They sure are nice looking stoves.  :o :o :o