Old farm house Orbon

[FarmGirl85]

I’ve been cleaning out my family’s old farm house and found this wood stove installed and haven’t been able to figure out how old it is. On the side it says SUNSET ORBON STOVE & RANGE CO. BELLEVILLE, ILL. on the front it has No.119 on it. Does anyone have any idea? It’s a beautiful little stove that I hope to restore.

 

[SpaceBus]

Looks like late 1890's or early 1900's. Back in those days most towns had a foundry to produce cast iron locally because it cost so much to transport the relatively fragile goods. It is a nice stove and I think that it would clean up fairly easily. What does the firebox look like? Could be a coal stove, especially for that region.

 

[begreen]

The company started in 1902. Orbon "As Good As Gold" kept making stove until the 1950s. ("Or Bon" = Gold is good in French). We've seen a few nice examples here. I would guess this parlor stove to be of a 1920-30 vintage. Earlier stoves generally had more Victorian ornamentation. This ornamentation started getting dropped after the 1900s as the more "modern" look became popular.

 

[glenlloyd]

Looks to be in very clean condition, like it was fortunate that it never got dumped out in the shed. Even the mica door windows are intact.

That's kind of a time capsule regarding how early 20th century life was...

Steve

 

[john26]

I had a natural gas cook stove made by Orbon it was original to the house built 1967. I used it up until 2018