Enamelware

The story of enamel cookware begins in the 1760s in Germany. Enamelled cookware came to the US after Western Europe. Around 1850 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 1860s. Enamelware was the first mass-produced American kitchenware. Production began in the 1870s, and continued through the 1930s. Pots, kettles baking tins, and ladles were stamped from thin sheets of iron, steel, or aluminum, then coated with enamel, which was fused to the metal in a very hot oven. At the Cottage both American and European enamelware is well represented in kitchen and other useful items, in all the colors so popular over the years.