Old-fashioned Iron Stoves

[Tropicalsenior]

Staff note: Split from the Food History Articles and Links discussion, to maintain focus.

 

On 12/5/2021 at 6:57 PM, chromedome said:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/smithsonian-libraries-and-archives/2021/11/18/kitchen-essentials-from-centuries-past/

A very interesting article, thank you. Until the early 1950s my mother cooked on one that looked exactly like this.

(Picture from Bargain John's holiday sale page)

 

Only hers was white. The compartment on the right is the hot water reservoir and the one on the left is the separate heating unit to heat the house on cold days and to start first thing in the morning to make coffee so that you didn't heat up the whole house in the summer. That was kind of an exercise in futility though because you had to heat up the whole stove to make breakfast eventually.

[ElsieD]

I remember when I was a kid one place we lived in (for all of 6 weeks!)  had a stove of that ilk.  The top compartment had a warming oven, the thing was a navy blue.  The knobs on the doors were a white stone of some sort.  For the short while that we lived there I remember trying to bake cookies in the oven with mixed results.  I also remember cleaning the top of the stove with some sort of polish. 

[Tropicalsenior]

3 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

For the short while that we lived there I remember trying to bake cookies in the oven with mixed results. 

My mother absolutely hated hers. It was over 70 years old and in perfect condition but when she got her modern stove she took it apart and threw it in a garbage dump in a far Canyon. Coming from antique crazy California I really cringed when I heard that. Even then, those things were selling for big bucks. But to her it was just an ugly old used stove.

[ElsieD]

4 minutes ago, Tropicalsenior said:

My mother absolutely hated hers. It was over 70 years old and in perfect condition but when she got her modern stove she took it apart and threw it in a garbage dump in a far Canyon. Coming from antique crazy California I really cringed when I heard that. Even then, those things were selling for big bucks. But to her it was just an ugly old used stove.

 

We had no choice but to use it as my parents rented the place.

[Tropicalsenior]

4 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

 

We had no choice but to use it as my parents rented the place.

I think my grandfather bought it new for the house when he built it in 1900. Before that I think my grandmother cooked in a fireplace in a sod house. My mother inherited it in about 1930 when my grandparents retired.

Edited December 6, 2021 by Tropicalsenior (log)