Here is a Ingram-Richardson Salesman Sample from the Ingram-Richardson Manufacturing Company located in Beaver Falls, PA. This Ingram-Richardson Salesman Sample is from the 1920s era and is in excellent condition considering how old it is. I’ve also heard these referred to as paperweights too.
It is approximately 4″ wide and made of porcelain enamel over steel with a felt-padded bottom. It’s interesting that it advertises not just the companies headquarters in Beaver Falls, PA but also two other production facilities located in Frankfort, IN and Bayonne, NJ. This originally would have been a salesman sample also known as a “leave-behind” from a mobile Ing-Rich salesman.
The graphics on this items display the Ing-Rich logo as well as the typography of their capabilities including “Porcelain Steel Signs”, “Steel & Cast Iron Enameling” and “Table Tops & Specialties”. The phrase below the Ing-Rich logo “Signum Perfectionis Porcel Iron” is Latin for “Pig Iron is the Sign of Perfection”. “Pig Iron” was an industrial material idea for manufacturing advertising signs at the time.