What the heck is a sad iron? Did it drop its ice cream on the floor? And asbestos? Homethingspast has the scoop. Somewhat implausibly, ‘sad’ is described as meaning ‘solid’, but I think it would be better to say ‘heavy‘ as can still be said of dough that doesn’t rise. More plausibly, the asbestos hood would be a ‘heat shield’ to keep the handle relatively cool, when you had a giant heavy core fresh off the stove to iron shirts with. So the thing in the picture is the core, and the asbestos would be attached to the handle (not shown) which clamps onto this.
Photo by True Legacy.