Not sure if memory is playing tricks on me but I seem to recall my original Antex irons having a sort of plastic hook sleeve on them so you could hang them up between solderings. I have a terry clip on the edge of one shelf nearby over the back of the workbench for shoving the handle of my current iron into and that works well - obviously it has to be well out of body area (head) range.
One of my most memorable soldering irons was a gun, like a shrunk down weller, in red plastic which appeared in NZ about 25 years ago. It was incredibly impressive in heat up time and overall heat once the trigger was pulled despite being very small - then after about 3 months it started to melt
? Turned out someone at the factory had put the wrong labels on irons intended for the US market (115v) and of course with NZ's 235v mains they were somewhat overdriven. We were all give the proper 235v model later in a recall and exchange but, although the replacement was pretty good, it was not a patch on the wrong one for heating up times.