An assortment of antique irons, many dating back to the 1800s, is the focal point of the front window display at A&A Curtain Cleaners on Main Street in Santa Ana.
The collection consists of at least 100 irons, some that had to be heated over a hot stove and others containing a chamber where hot coals were placed to maintain heat.
There are travel irons, early plug-in models and decades-old miniature irons used for pressing small and delicate garments.
The irons have been displayed throughout the business and served as conversation pieces for 50 years.
Maureen and Raymond Telles, owners of A&A Curtain Cleaners since 1993, are planning to sell the business and retire in about a year, but rather than sell the collection they inherited along with the business, the couple said they would rather see them displayed for the public to enjoy, providing a history lesson on how garments were pressed, long before temperature control dials and other features were added, making the task of ironing a breeze.
To iron out the wrinkle of how to get the collection into the right hands, the couple reached out to their friend Timothy Rush, a local historian with a passion for preserving Santa Ana history.
As a longtime board member and former president of the Santa Ana Historical Preservation Society and former board member and chair of the board of the Santa Ana Centennial Heritage Museum, Rush was certain he could find a home for the irons.
“When you see how crude the technology was and what we take for granted today, getting out an ironing board and plugging it in and in three and a half minutes it’s hot and you pour distilled water in and you got steam almost immediately,” Rush said. “That’s a far cry from what they had to go through even less than a hundred years ago.”
Rush, who is in the process of photographing and cataloging the irons, said the collection will be divided, with some irons being displayed at the Historical Preservation Society and others at the Centennial Heritage Museum.
“They could have put them on eBay or Etsy or whatever and sold them,” Rush said of the Telles. “But they wanted the collection displayed and kudos to them for wanting to preserve the collection.”
The Telles’ inherited the irons when they purchased the business from A&A’s previous owners, Jim and Val Pierce, who owned the business from 1973 to 1993.
Jim Pierce had a personal passion for antique irons and started the collection, Maureen Telles said.
Maureen Telles had moved to Southern California from New York and rented the house in the back of business. She started working for the Pierces in 1976 after asking the owners whether they were hiring.
“I was looking for work and just knocked on the door one day,” she said. “I just looked at it as temporary.”
But instead, she ended up staying on, getting married and raising her son while working for the couple and ultimately buying the business.
“They became like parents to me,” Telles said of the Pierces. “My son called them papa and grandma, and he gave me away at my wedding to my husband and he left me the irons.”
While the current building on Main Street was constructed in the 1940s and has always gone by the A&A Curtain Cleaning name, the moniker A&A dates back much farther in Santa Ana, Rush said.
County records from the 1890s list a business called A&A French Laundry, which existed at various locations over the years, he said.
And while it’s not known for certain whether the current A&A Curtain Cleaners and A&A French Laundry are the same business that has changed hands multiple times, it’s within the realm of possibility that they are, Rush said.
Rush said the irons will likely be displayed in the two locations over the next few months.
“I guess I’m an old soul and so history and certainly local history mean a lot to me to be able to preserve that,” Rush said. “So, I didn’t want to see these wind up being boxed up and sold off.”