Cast Iron Cookware News (CICN) Re-Mastered

In the 1980s, the World Wide Web and eBay did not yet exist, so collectors of vintage cast iron cookware were often restricted to what they could find in their own general area. To seek new pieces for their collections beyond that required the expense of travel, the telephone, the US Mail, and contact with other known collectors.

In 1988, avid collector Steve Stephens embarked on a mission to to assist other similarly-interested aficionados in expanding the knowledge base of collectible vintage cast iron cookware and also to extend the reach of its fans. In January of that year, the first issue of Cast Iron Cookware News was self-published by Steve, using the technology available at the time-- an electric typewriter, cut-and-pasted photographs, and the services of a local Kinko's. 140 copies of that first issue were produced and distributed, and 50 hobbyists across the country signed up as paid subscribers. Five more, roughly bi-monthly issues rounded out the year's Volume I. CICN continued to be published semi-regularly until the spring of 1994.

Over the years, and with the advancement of technology, optically scanned copies of CICN became available from a handful of sources on the web. Locked into static Adobe Acrobat .pdf files, however, the newsletters were sometimes difficult reading on a computer screen, due to the landscape formatting required on some of their pages.

2013 marked the 25th anniversary of that first volume of CICN. Much of the content in those first and subsequent issues remains to this day a valuable resource for collectors old and new alike, both for the informational aspects and for the historical perspective afforded to today's readers of the state of the hobby at that time. To bring CICN completely into the Internet Age, the old, typewritten manuscripts are now-- with Steve's gracious permission-- reproduced here as HTML web documents.

Every attempt has been made to retain the look and feel of the original typewritten pages, but with some improvements:

- Navigation within and between newsletters. Page numbers referenced are active hyperlinks.
- The ability to click on landscaped pages and images to instantly rotate them for easier reading or viewing.

Additionally, present day amplifications and clarifications will be available where indicated by special symbols.

Cast Iron Cookware News, Vol. I No. 1, January 1988