[edgarspencer]

Republic Iron Works were the largest supplier of pig iron to the foundry industry, for many years. Some time a while back, I wrote an article in PP about the iron melting cupola, with basics of how it worked, and what it was fed with. The main ingredient used in smaller foundries was, naturally, pig iron. Larger foundries and melting shops used iron ore and alloyed with Silicon and manganese. The Cherry St. foundry, being quite small, bought pig iron, and most probably from Republic. The salesmen would visit these shops on a very frequent basis, because margins were low, and there was competition. Naturally, these salesmen brought loads of goodies, like the tape measure, and pocket pads with risque' ladies on the cover. I remember my dad finding his fathers collection of these, hidden from my grandmother, and dad thought he had them well hidden from me. Ha!
The tape measure is interesting, if only to me,in that it has both std. rule scales and shrink rule (for iron) which was 1/8" longer, per foot than standard. This was for the pattern maker to use, so that the IRON casting, which would shrink, on solidification, by that 1/8" to the foot.
The Last Supper casting seems pretty out of character for novelty items a foundry might make for their salesmen to hand out, like the Parker Bear, or the tiny vise.
The real reason this particular casting was chosen is only meaningful to old time foundrymen, and by old, I mean a lot older than my 71 years.
As you can see, the small casting exhibits pretty fine detail, and for that reason, it was used as a test for molders, who as I said earlier, prepared their own molding sand. The degree of detail was somewhat used to determine the molder, A, could loose mold the piece, and B, with a sand that would impart the detail.
No one even dared breath the fact that the melting department was equally responsible in fluxing and delivering to the pouring crew a molten metal that would also impart the detail.
The identification tape cast into the rear of the piece is an aluminum tape, made in the pattern department, and attached to patterns for just that purpose. That feature would indicate to me your pieces was made post WW1.