#7 Unknown Skillet & #9 Griddle

Jeff,
The chrome plated little guy is from Chicago Hardware Foundry c. later 1930s.

The other two pans, skillet and griddle, do look to be from the same maker but I have never learned who that may have been. Long gone, no catalogs with PHOTOS that could help in identifying them. I think they came from foundry(s) in the middle of the country; midwest or close by. That style of handle and the narrow lips are distinctive but common. I never bothered to collect these pans as they didn't appeal to me because of rather rough casting quality. But some are quite smooth. Does that depend on which foundry made them or when they were made? Wish I knew.
 
Thank you Steve, The chrome plated little guy we talked about in another post.
That is an issue with the picasa photo album. I could not just pick the newest photos to add to this post.

Regarding these pans, yes the casting is rather rough, not keepers for myself. They will find a new home. What time frame would they be from. 1860 - 1890 ???

Thank You
 
I think post Civil War but I have not even been able to date the early pans closer than to about 10-20 years. For all I know your pans could be somewhat after 1900 or may have been made for decades. I have two users recently that I have had for a long time but I turned them in to frequent users.

Vose & Co. was in business under that name from 1848-61 so I know the age, more of less, of those two pans. I was able to find a stove catalog that had been reprinted but with no cookware shown. Just enough more about the company that I was able to find out more about my pans and the dates in another book source I have. Those two skillets are more primitive than most early skillets and look their age but are in very good condition. The first pan I got from ebay was marked OSE & Co. but that didn't seem right and it looked like the first letter had gotten shaved off, fallen off, etc. the pattern. So I started with A to Z to see which letters would work in front of OSE. Vose was one of them and I may have looked it up. Those two pans are two of a very low number of early skillets that I know either the maker or the date, generally not both. A lot of guessing is what I do. The Vose skillets are a 7 and a 9 and match each other. I really like using them and, from use, they are now pretty well seasoned.
 
Steve, Now I know that there is a LOT that I do not know about cast iron cookware, so here goes time to feed the brain. When did foundries stop leaving the gate on their castings?
 
Jeffrey R. said:
When did foundries stop leaving the gate on their castings?
Click to expand...
It's not so much that they stopped leaving it, but rather that they moved the gate from the bottom to the top edge of the lip of the piece (in most cases), and any excess left when the sprue and runner were broken off could be ground off with a pass across a grinding wheel. The change to that technology started in the late 1800s.
 
The bottom gating, handle style, pour spouts, and deeply inset heat ring style all point to that, yes.
 
I'm not so sure one can date bottom gated skillets and/or the pans you have to pre-1900. They may have been made a bit later but, not being around then, I don't know how one would or could determine that without seeing a catalog sheet that would both be dated and have an accurate artist's rendition of the pan or a good photo. I have some early catalog pages (Xeroxes) but the illustrations are not detailed enough to match up with actual skillets. Sometimes I think generic illustrations were used by many companies and foundries to depict their wares. Early illustrations of many Griswold pieces do not look like the actual pieces but are just artist renditions.

Bottom gated skillets may have been made into the 1930s such as with Glasscock pots or skillets according to a major collector of that brand. Smaller and less advanced foundries may have stayed with the bottom gated technology much later than c.1900. Griswold had only a few bottom gated pieces from the start such as tea kettles, a few pots and not much else. They were an early adopter of the side gated technology.
 
WoW the brain is scrambled!!
Boy, I know less that what you have forgotten. But you are a walking encyclopedia. Thank you for your time.
 
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