An Antique That Lasts a Lifetime

QUESTION: I love to cook. And I love to cook in my cast-iron skillet. I’ve had this skillet for nearly 50 years and it never fails me. I bought it at a second-hand store to use for camping, but I liked it so much, I began using to cook with in my kitchen. The name stamped into the bottom is Griswold. I’ve seen others like it at flea markets and would like to know more about it. What can you tell me about the company?

ANSWER: While other antiques may last as long or longer as a cast-iron skillet, few can be used regularly and still retain their value. Your skillet is a real classic. And if you take care of it and use it regularly, it should last another 50 years.

Cast-iron skillets have been around since 1642. The first one made, a small, three-legged covered pot that held one quart came from a foundry in Saugus, Massachusetts. The thing weighed 2 1/4 pounds, so the lady of the house probably developed some pretty heft biceps. From then until the early 19th century, cast-iron cookware had great value, so people took care of it and guarded it as a prized possession. 

However, cookware made of it was brittle, prone to rust, grainy, unfinished and difficult, if not impossible, to repair if cracked. It was also "reactive." Acidic foods, such as vinegar, tomatoes, and citrus, re-acted with the iron and changed the flavor and color of whatever the cook was preparing. The solution seemed to be to season the it. A non-stick surface wasn’t natural to cast iron. It had to be created by seasoning or curing the piece. A cook would repeatedly coat a pot’s inside surface with animal fat and place the utensil in a 250- to 300-degree oven for two to three hours. After wiping away any excess fat, he or she would lightly rinse it with hot water, using no soap, then thoroughly dry and store it in a dry place. Many people never ever put a used piece under water. Today, cast-iron cookware comes pre-seasoned.

By the 1840s, open hearth cooking had been replaced by the cast-iron stove which enclosed the fire in iron and shielded the cook from an open flame. Cooks placed their pots directly on solid iron plates—not open grates—that formed the top of the stove. In later models, foundries  cut deep holes into the top and made the iron plates removable. With this innovation, a pot could be placed into the hole for a snug fit and was as close as possible to the flame. Stove manufacturers found it to their advantage to add a line of cast-iron cookware that perfectly fit the removable iron plates or “eyes” of their stoves.

By the mid-19th-century, foundries that made cast-iron stoves also made cast-iron cookware— also called hollowware. The Selden brothers, John and Samuel, operated a foundry in Erie, Pennsylvania, where they manufactured butt hinges and other household hardware. In 1863, they added cast-iron cookware to their expanding product line. Because of the areas widely known foundries, they marked their earliest skillets, muffin pans, and Dutch ovens with one word, “Erie.”

In 1868, Matthew Griswold joined the Selden brothers. Unlike his partners, Griswold believed in patenting the products developed in the foundry. He patented just about everything. The name "Selden and Griswold" appeared on many cookware items shortly after 1868. At Samuel's death in 1882, Griswold bought out the remaining family members and changed the name of the company to his own. He cleverly kept "Erie” on some of Selden's most popular pieces, but added “Griswold” above it.

The Griswold Manufacturing. Company and its predecessors produced superior cookware in an industry dominated by inferior, low-quality goods. In the late 19th century, cast iron was often made by prisoners. The top of the Griswold line was "extra finish ware"—cooking utensils with a polished exterior, a milled interior, and top edges so tight that the connection between the pan and the lid was a waterproof joint that even the thinnest knife couldn’t penetrate.

Women noticed the difference. Unlike the products made by its competitors, pieces made by Griswold were thin and lightweight. After centuries of super heavy pots and pans, Griswold overcame cast iron's weight problem.

Women also noticed the company's distinctive trademark. Griswold featured a cross, a sign of quality, on most of its products. Over the firm’s long history from 1850 to 1957, Griswold Manufacturing Company produced over 180 cast-iron items. Included in the "non-cookware category" were cast-iron ashtrays, burglar alarms, fire. sets, gas heaters, sadirons, mailboxes, pokers, display racks, shovels, spittoons, sun dials and tobacco cutters. They introduced gas stoves in 1891, kerosene heaters in 1895, and parlor stoves in 1900.

Today, the cast-iron skillet dominates most Griswold collections and is nearly always the first piece a new collector buys. Good luck with your skillet and keep cooking.

What's Cookin'?

QUESTION: My great-grandmother died recently and my husband and I now have the task of disposing of her monstrous, cast-iron kitchen stove, which we understand belonged to her mother. Is it worth moving the stove to our place or should we just call a junk dealer to remove it?

ANSWER: Depending on the ultimate condition of your great-grandmother’s stove, you may find that it’s worth far more than you imagine. You have two options: Clean it up, restore it, and use it in some way in your house or sell it. Either way, there are a few things you need to know about old kitchen stoves before you decide.

Colonial life centered around giant smoking, inefficient fireplaces. The walk-in Colonial hearth dominated the most important room in the house—the kitchen. Housewives or their servants continually added fuel to the cooking fires throughout the day. After supper, cooks kept the fading embers alive until the following morning, when they began the daily routine of stoking, feeding, and cooking once again.

During the 1790s, a Massachusetts-born physicist named Benjamin Thompson (aka Count Rumford) discovered how inefficient these fireplaces were and set out to invent a better solution. The Rumford stove had shallower fireplaces and a more streamlined chimney that forced out smoke but not heat. It featured one fire source that could heat several cooking pots and enabled the cook to regulate the heat individually for each pot. It was more of a fireplace insert than a stove and required modification of the huge hearths. These became  status symbol among the wealthy. Even Thomas Jefferson had several installed at Monticello.The downside about the Rumford stove was that it was meant for large kitchens.

Foundries began producing small wood-burning kitchen stoves, complete with ovens, in the early 19th century. Forty years later, makers produced full-sized kitchen stoves by the thousands. The size of kitchen stoves increased the manufacturers offered such options as warming ovens, extra surface burners, shelves, water reservoirs, and decorative panels of enamel or porcelain.

Historians refer to this style of six-and ten-plate wood-burning, box stove as a laundry stove because housewives or servants could place wash kettles on the flat, top surface. Some laundry stoves, such as the one invented by J.T. Davy, featured hooks for six flat irons around the belly of the stove. These, plus a putting one on the loading plate, enabled the laundress to heat seven irons at once.

British inventor, James Sharp patented the first successful gas stove in 1826. During the 1910s, gas stoves appeared with enamel coatings that made the stoves easier to clean. Most households had gas stoves with enclosed ovens by the 1920s. However, the slow installation of gas lines to most households delayed the progress of gas stoves. By World War I, the new gas stoves permanently replaced fireplaces for cooking.

If you’re planning on selling your great-grandmother’s stove, check the porcelain areas carefully. While you can easily clean it with a strong kitchen degreaser, you cannot replace any part that is badly cracked or missing. The only thing you can do in that case is to paint the damaged area with white or colored porcelain repair paint. But this only works on small areas.

Monumental monstrosities like your great-grandmother’s kitchen stove, are some of the most sought-after antiques. They helped raise and bake bread and simmered soup for hours on cold winter days. Today, the old time kitchen stove has come to symbolize the concept of "home."   

The Ultimate All-in-One

QUESTION: My grandmother had a cabinet in her kitchen which she called a “Hoosier.” She told me her mother left it to her and now I have it in my kitchen. What can you tell me about it?

ANSWER: The modern kitchen with its microwave, glass-topped stove, side-by-side refrigerator, and granite countertops is a far cry from your great-grandma’s kitchen. The most modern thing in her kitchen was her Hoosier, an all-in-one preparation and storage unit that brought her convenience and practicality.

Named after the Hoosier Manufacturing Co. of New Castle, Indiana, the Hoosier cabinet was to become one of the most popular pieces of furniture to hit the American market. Though there were other companies in Indiana that made them, Hoosier Manufacturing built over four million of these special cabinets between 1900 and 1940. Until 1920, the company made and finished their new all-in-one cabinet in natural oak, but as the third decade of the 20th century progressed, they began to offer Hooisers with white enamel-lined drawers. Because of the bright white of the enamel, people called them “White Beauties.”

When the Hoosier first appeared, American homes didn’t have built-in storage cabinets. Soon housewives demanded something in which they could store their baking supplies and equipment, as well as give them an additional work surface. The company quickly adapted the 19th-century baker’s cabinet, a piece of furniture they were already making, to fit the needs of the modern housewife. These existing cabinets featured a work surface to roll out and knead dough, a few cabinets above, and  “possum belly” drawers below to hold flour and sugar. Manufacturers of these baker’s cabinets made the drawers from tin to protect their contents from rodents. At first, they made the work surface of wood, then later employed zinc, aluminum, and porcelain enamel. They attached casters to the legs, both for ease of moving and to keep ants out of the cabinet.

By rearranging the parts of the baker’s cabinet, Hoosier Manufacturing came up with a well-organized, compact unit which answered the housewife’s needs for storage and working space. The company added to these cabinets many improvements, including flour sifters, bread drawers lined with enamel, cutting boards, and an assortment of storage containers, to help the homemaker.

The typical Hoosier cabinet had three sections—a bottom section, featuring one large compartment with a slide-out shelf and several drawers to one side, a top portion only half as deep with several smaller compartments with doors, with or without windows, and a large lower compartment with a roll-top door that could be closed to hide various tools and equipment. Hoosier joined the top and bottom of the cabinet using a pair of metal channels which served as the guide for a sliding work surface, which usually had a pair of shallow drawers attached to its underside. The cabinet, with its work surface retracted, was normally about two feet deep— double that when pulled out—while the cabinet stood nearly six feet high.

A distinctive feature of the Hoosier cabinet was its accessories. Most came equipped with a variety of racks and other hardware to hold and organize spices and various staples. Some came with a hand coffee grinder and a combination flour-bin/sifter, a tin hopper that a housewife could use without having to remove it from the cabinet. Some contained a similar bin for sugar.

To hold a variety of spices and other staples, Hoosiers came equipped with special glass jars, manufactured by the Sneath Glass Company, to fit the cabinet and its racks. Original sets of Hoosier glassware consisted of coffee and tea canisters, a salt box, and four to eight spice jars. Some manufacturers also included a cracker or cookie jar. Some Hoosiers had elastic straps attached on the inside of their doors behind which housewives could place cards with such information as measurement conversions, sample menus, and household tips.

Manufacturers marked their cabinets with an identifying label which was often engraved or stamped onto metal, then screwed onto the front of the cabinet. Some glued paper labels on the back of the cabinet. Both types often disappeared as a result of refinishing.

Though Hoosier cabinets remained popular into the 1930s, they began to fall into disuse as soon as home builders equipped new kitchens with built-in cabinets and other appliances. Today, Hoosiers, dating from 1900-1910, sell on eBay for $500-$2,300. Later models sell for as little as $200.