Tremendous trivets and more: celebrating the real-life Iron Man's amazing collections
This week marks the 10th anniversary of a rather unusual record collection held by someone you could call the real-life Iron Man. But his record-breaking archive isn’t related to any caped crusader you’ll find in a comic book… although as GWR Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday discovered, this Romanian record breaker is no less heroic.
Imagine walking into a museum and realizing that instead of dinosaurs, mummies or ancient swords, you’re surrounded by thousands upon thousands of… kitchen objects! Trivets. Corkscrews. Irons. Sounds random? Maybe. A bit mundane? Boring, even? Well, it’s absolutely not – not once you meet the mastermind behind it all: Ion Chirescu, a Romanian collector who turned practical household items into a record-breaking obsession.
Let’s start with the star of the stove: the trivet.
A trivet is that humble object that sits under hot pots so tables don’t get scorched. Okay, it’s not the most glamorous piece of kitchenware. But Ion looked at this practical little hero and thought, “What if I collected… all of them?” Fast forward just 13 years to April 2016 and our pot-rest apostle was the proud owner of 10,165 unique examples – the largest collection of trivets ever recorded. And yes, that’s not a typo. Ten. Thousand. Trivets.
And like all GWR collections, these aren’t just multiple copies of the same thing. His archive is a metal time machine, featuring trivets from the 17th century to today. Some are forged in foundries, others lovingly hand-crafted. There are stove trivets, table trivets, decorative trivets, miniature trivets and even plaque trivets adorned with life-affirming mottos. They’re made from wrought iron, brass, bronze, copper, cast iron, aluminium and composites.
Basically, if humans ever invented a way to stop heat from scorching furniture, Ion probably owns an example of it. His collection captures this whole journey, neatly sorted into 10 major categories.
An example of a trivet. Image by Marc Pascual from Pixabay
And before you say, “Why is there a record for this? Trivet-collecting surely isn’t even a thing...”, you should know that Ion broke the existing record held by Germany’s Gerd Bonk, who thought his collection was massive at 126 different pieces.
Read about more record-breaking collections in our dedicated section.
Working flat out to break records
Not content with just one record title, the Romanian metal fan – metallophile? siderophile? – soon claimed another. Four months after receiving his certificate for the trivet collection, Ion revealed to us the largest collection of irons – as in, the metal things that flatten your clothes. He logged a jaw-dropping 30,071 pieces from different countries and historical periods. That’s right, nearly three times as many irons than trivets! Enough to flatten the wrinkles in an entire plain of African elephants.
And we’re still not done.
Next came the world’s largest collection of corkscrews, with 23,965 unique openers – a haul he began amassing back in 2005. And this doesn’t include the 1,461 accessories that didn’t qualify as true corkscrews, including champagne cork grippers, wire cutters, champagne taps, non-worm extractors, and gimlets and awls used to puncture corks.
Ion’s love for corkscrews isn’t just about having plenty of options for opening his favourite tipple. It’s not even really about quantity. It’s about history. His favourite piece – and the one that he’s spent the most money on – is an 1839 Victorian patented spring corkscrew made from iron that had spent 656 years inside the foundations of the old London Bridge. That London Bridge – the medieval one from nursery-rhyme fame... hence the £49,600 ($77,718; € 62,652) hammer price at auction in 2014, making it the all-time most expensive cockscrew.
The most expensive corkscrew
Who knew that kitchen hardware could become luxury collectibles? Ion, for one! In 2009, he also bought the most expensive iron, shelling out $15,000 (£8,839.65; €10,413.30) for a “super rare, alcohol-fuelled steam locomotive figural iron” with gold pinstriping. Depressing, in all the right ways... Perhaps we need to rename him Iron Chirescu!
The most expensive iron
All of these incredible kitchen collectables live together in the Chirescu Private Collection Museum in Bucharest, where they’re kept on permanent public display. Here, ordinary objects get extraordinary respect, proving something important: you don’t need to collect flashy things to make your mark in history. Sometimes, all it takes is a deep appreciation for the everyday objects that the rest of us barely notice. Who knows? Perhaps you’ve got the start of an amazing record-breaking collection lying in your kitchen drawer right now!
(BTW, if you came here expecting the largest collection of Iron Man memorabilia, you can find that here!
Other incredible kitchen collections:
Spoons: 30,000
Spoon rests: 635
Coffee pots: 27,390
Mugs: 6,352
Teapots: 30,000
Egg cups: 15,485
Vacuum cleaners: 322
Bottle openers: 33,492
Spatulas: 1,636
Toasters: 1,284
Cookie cutters: 1,207
Tea towels: 1,457
Nutcrackers: 10,000
Kitchen collection categories awaiting your claim:
Washing-up sponges
Steel forks
Sporks (you know, the half-spoon half-fork utensil)