History of enamelware - kitchen & household

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Early enamel-lined cooking pots

Think about enamel kitchen utensils today, and you probably imagine something coated all over in enamel. That certainly wasn't the case in the early years. To begin with, cooking pots were lined inside with enamel, but they looked like any other cast iron on the outside. People wanted a way of coating iron to stop metallic tastes or rust getting into food: something acid-resistant and easy to clean without laborious scouring, something more durable than the tin linings used inside copper.

The story of enamel cookware begins in the s in Germany. The idea of finding a safe, convenient coating first took hold there: in scientific writing and in actual iron works. Fifty years later vitreous enamel linings, also called porcelain, for kitchen pans were becoming familiar in several European countries. Enamelling was no longer limited to decorative arts and crafts.

Were enamel-lined cooking pots really as clean and safe as they seemed? Some people praised them as far better than anything known before. Others spoke of poisonous ingredients leaching into the food. Finding out what cooks or housekeepers thought in the early days is not so easy.

Over the next few decades enamel-coated metal came into use for domestic pots, pans, basins, as well as for street signs, medical equipment and more. And yet enamelware was still a long way from the attractive and useful mass-produced utensils of the late s and early s.

Enamel in the USA: flourishing after a late start

Enamelled cookware came to the US after Western Europe. Around Americans began to own enamel-lined culinary utensils, but they were very plain, nothing like the colourful mottled surfaces that were yet to come. The Stuart & Peterson foundry in Philadelphia was making enamel-lined cast iron pots in the s.

The interior of the hollow ware, as prepared by the steam lathe, is covered with a white paste, and put into the oven to be dried. After drying, it is transferred to an enamelling oven, where a white heat, sufficient to melt glass, is applied, which fuses this coating, making it soft as liquid glass. While in this state it is swiftly taken from the oven, rapidly covered with a white powder, and immediately returned back to the oven, where it is again subjected to a white heat, aud finally taken out to be gradually cooled in the open air. The enamel is, in fact, a regular coating of porcelain upon the metal, and with ordinary care is imperishable. On the contrary, the enamelled iron ware made in England (which has been nearly driven out of American consumption by Stuart & Peterson's manufacture) finally runs into an infinitesimal number of minute cracks, which chip off and render the vessel quite useless.
A history of American manufactures from to , Bishop, Freedley, and Young,

Plenty was written about unsatisfactory cookware:

Ten years ago the porcelain-lined kettles were considered a great invention for boiling substances that required particular care, and many a thrifty housekeeper has congratulated herself on the possession of one, and then grieved herself sick almost to find it burned black in a few days, through the carelessness of servants, and just as liable to spoil her delicacies as an ordinary tin saucepan.
Lady's Home Magazine, Philadelphia,

The utensils for roasting and even grinding coffee are now frequently lined with porcelain, as are many other articles for the kitchen. No doubt the porcelain is exceedingly clean and nice while it remains perfect; and it is an advantage to the coffee-berry especially not to be brought into immediate contact with heated metal. But porcelain-lined articles are not only very expensive, but they never can be depended on. They are quite as liable to crack and fly in pieces the first time of using as the fiftieth; and, of course, are of no further service.
The Art of Confectionery, Tilton and Co., Boston,

It was in the s that a surge of competitive creativity began to change American kitchenware. Out of this came the huge range of enamel goods spattered, speckled, and splashed, which appeal to collectors today. Two companies led the way in patenting and promoting innovations: not just attractive surface decoration but continuing improvements in enamelling sheet metal joints, attaching handles etc. We shouldn't forget that throughout the s changes in metal working are important in the story of enamelware. It's not all about the surface.

Mottled, marbled, or plain?

The first two big US companies making enamel homewares were founded by migrants from Europe in the s. One company had French heritage, the other German. Lalance and Grosjean started as a business importing sheet metal and metal homeware before setting up their Manufacturing Company in New York, with a metal stamping factory in Woodhaven. Their mottled enamel was agateware, typically blue.

Frederick and William Niedringhaus built up the St. Louis Stamping Co. in Missouri, then moved graniteware production to Granite City, Illinois.  They later evolved into NESCO, whose grey enamel was sometimes said to flow from "pure melted granite" . They got the first US patent for a mottled enamel finish, just a few months before a competing patent by L & G. Both companies went on to patent numerous improvements: from better spouts to novel surface decoration.

Vollrath managed to establish itself a little later, and there were other companies too. Carl Vollrath had to assert the uniqueness of his enamelling method to get a patent for his kind of "enameled iron-ware of the kind known as speckled or pepperedware":

The ware is distinguished from what is known as mottled ware, such as granite or agate ware, in the fact that the contrasting specks are produced by the incorporation in the enamel coating of an agent which presents the contrasting color, whereas in the case of the mottled ware the specks or spots are not only generally of a larger and somewhat less defined character than those found in the speckledware, but are caused by the absorption into the glaze of oxide of iron formed upon the surface of the metal during the process of enameling.
From Vollrath's patent

The best-known brands, especially the granite and agate ware names, held onto a strong position into the 20th century. They sold for higher prices. In Lalance and Grosjean&#;s &#;Agate nickel-steel ware&#; was much more expensive than Haberman&#;s &#;grey mottled enameled ware&#; L&G's 2 quart lipped saucepan cost 18¢ ; Haberman's was 7¢. Meanwhile, Sears had a set of 17 pieces of "Peerless gray enamel ware" selling for about $2.70.

Agate nickel-steel ware ads claimed a "chemist's certificate" proving it free of "arsenic, antimony, and lead" from the s onward. Enamel had not quite shaken off the suspicion that some formulas leaked toxins into cooked food. Today most enamelled cast iron usually has a plain, often white, lining however gorgeously coloured the outside is.

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At the time when mottled enamel was a huge success in the USA some countries stuck to a plainer look. Classic British enamel was typically white with navy trim, though deeper colours were also used. Sweden had a lot of cream with green edging. Other countries had a mixture of plain and speckled, with folk art decoration, like floral motifs, also popular in some places.

New rivals - aluminium, stainless steel, Pyrex, plastic - brought serious competition. From the s enamelled metal was never again an "obvious" attractive, affordable choice.

Timeline: enamelled metal for culinary and domestic use

...We are aware that sheet-iron vessels constructed of a single piece of sheet metal have been stamped into shape and enameled in mottled colors to represent granite and marble, and also that sheet and cast metal vessels have also been enameled with vitreous enamels, when constructed in one piece, and this we do not wish to claim.
What we claim, and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is &#;
A sheet-metal vessel constructed in two or more sections, united at the edges by semicircular overlapping joints, and coated with vitreous enamel, whereby the lapped joints are cemented together and held, and the vessel strengthened and ornamented, substantially as set forth...
patent for inventors John C. Milligan, of South Orange, New Jersey, and George Booth, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, assignors to Lalance and Grosjean

...until a few years ago, almost all thinly enameled ironware, whether of wrought or cast iron, had a plain surface or one of uniform color, blue, brown, violet, white or gray. Subsequently there was introduced and extensively sold upon the market so-called mottled ware, or granite or agate ware, which is ware in which the enamel coating is given a variegated appearance...
, Vollrath patent

Notes

~ To find out about specific patterns and finishes from a collector's point of view you will probably need at least one serious collector's reference book, and/or membership of a collector's society.
~ Graniteware is a general name for speckled or mottled enamel nowadays, often used without meaning the original brand.

5 March

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Automated molding process installed

As the economy bounced back, Lodge responded to growing business demand, and began converting its foundry from a hand-pour operation to an automated molding process. In , Dick Kellerman led discussions about the purchase of a Danish molding machine called a Disamatic. Lodge purchased the second U.S. Disamatic in and became the first American Company to use the Disamatic on U.S. soil in . This led to safer and more efficient manufacturing that, at the time, was very rare.

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