My dad swore by cast iron cookware. He liked using it to cook over his antique cast iron cooking stove (We had a gas range, but he preferred the old stove). He said the cast iron pans heated more evenly and made food taste better – and when I visited my parents as an adult and ate at their table, I had to agree!

Dad was very particular about his cast iron cookware – most of which was, like the stove, antique or near-antique. I remember with fond smiles the way Dad objected to Mom’s insistence on washing the pans with soap and water, which Dad said ruined the patina. My dad took to wiping out the pans with paper towels, oiling them, and then putting them away in the old stove’s oven as soon as possible after he’d used them and before mom could notice. Most of the time, he got away with it.

In addition to his frying pans, Dad also had other cast iron cookware, among which was a very large, handled pot which hung over the fireplace on the other side of the stone chimney into which the old cast iron stove was vented. He cooked in this pot only very rarely since the fireplace didn’t produce the more uniform heating in his cast iron stove, for which the pot was too large.

Manufacturers of Cast Iron Cookware

The most famous name in cast iron pots and pans was Griswold. This company, founded in Erie, PA, dates from 1865. Its pots, skillets, and bakeware are marked on the bottom with the name Griswold in a square cross enclosed in a double-rim circle. The company ceased production in 1957, but the pans can be found on the secondary market in antique shops and online auctions. They are very popular among cooks, and it’s not unusual to see them priced in three figures today.

In the 1910s, the name on the back of the pans was in a subtly italicized form within the cross and circles. In the 1920s and ‘30s, the Griswold mark appeared in block lettering; it is these pans that are most desirable on the secondary market today. This logo was large and extended over almost the entire bottom surface of the cookware. Beginning in the early 1940s until the company ceased production in 1957, the size of the name and its surrounding logo became much smaller.

Along with each of these Griswold logos was inscribed the place of origin, Erie or Erie, PA. The Griswold brand name was acquired in 1957 by the Wagner foundry, which continued making cast iron cookware through the mid 1960s with the Griswold logo but without the Erie, PA, since Wagner was located in Sidney, Ohio. In the early to mid-1960s, the pans were marked with both the Griswold and Wagner logos.

Lodge was another maker of cast iron cookware, founded in 1896 and still in production. Its first factory was destroyed by a fire – a frequent early 20th-century disaster at foundries and potteries that had open fires for production. The Blacklock family, which founded and owned the company, opened a new factory nearby as Lodge Cast Iron, which is still in operation today. The surfaces of its pans are somewhat rougher than Griswold’s, and it is priced much more economically on the secondary market than either of its rivals, Griswold or Le Creuset.