Black Antique Cast Malleable Iron Victorian Trivets/Toast Stands
These three-legged stands were placed over the fireplace coals to keep the food in the pots and kettles hot. A quad had four legs and often was much simpler in design and construction. Smaller, simpler trivets were used under irons. Some trivets fastened to the fender and were designed to hold plates of toast. Now even cast-iron reproductions of all sorts of trivets are used on dining room tables and for decoration. The earliest ones were made handmade by blacksmiths, but by the mid-1800s, foundries were providing cast iron trivets. By this time stoves had also come in to general use and trivets became shorter, so they could be used as protectors on the stove top or table.
