Help on Three legged skillet

[J_S_Taylor]

Hello all,
I found this skillet (which weights a lot) for a whopping 1.00.  I was intrigued by the handle.  Does anyone have any information on this? How old is it and the maker? When did they stop making pieces with gate marks? When did they begin?  
Thanks,
Sharon

[J_S_Taylor]

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[J_S_Taylor]

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[moosejaw]

Sharon,

There has been several discussions about gate marks on the forum.  Do a search and you should get a lot of info.  There are several different schools of thoughts about gate marks.  The general rule has been that a piece with a gate mark was PROBABLY made prior to 1880.  However, there are a lot of exceptions to that rule.  

For a buck, I'd say you did very well, even with the pitting on the bottom.  How is the inside?  Your spider is unmarked, so there is no way of telling who made it.  Steve Stephens is the man to talk to about these.  He has a lot of very old skillets, and this is one of his lines of expertise.  He usually comes on at night, so you should hear from him then.  

[J_S_Taylor]

Hi Marty,
Here is the inside. ( I am still blowing rust out of my nose.) It was pretty crusty.  How much pitting on a piece like this is allowed?  I have a 1864 R.S. Ransom waffle iron with cradle and it has a lot of pitting.  (I have to admit if I was that old I would expect worse) The cradle was made from very thin iron and has a straight line crack which is being welded. My question is due to the thiness of the iron how many survived and does it still have value?
Thanks,
Sharon

[moosejaw]

For collecting, no pitting of extremely minor pitting is ideal.  Some very old pieces are difficult to find sans pitting.

If these are just users, then the amount of pitting you can tolerate is up to you.  The waffle iron with the cracked base, even welded, has no collector value.  However, you can doctor it up and make it pretty for display.

I think your spider is cool.  I wouldn't have passed it up for a buck.  The inside isn't too bad, so it will display nicely.  I bought a cracked Pocasset dowlegs for $5.  In perfect shape, it sells for $$$$$$$$$.  So I will make it pretty and put it on display.......eventually.

Collect what puts a smile on your face.  You'll learn more as you go about collecting and then you become more discerning.  I have learned SO much on this forum.  

[Steve_Stephens]

I would put gate marked pieces as being pre-1900 roughly.  1880 is too early although Griswold was, by then, making side gated pieces but they were way ahead of their time back then.  I have a Wood & Bishop skillet dated 1889 (I assume it's a date and not a pattern number) which has a fine bottom gate and Wood & Bishop was a stove maker (and stove makers were very good at making fine castings).  Probably there is a 10 to 30 year overlap among different foundries as to when they changed over to side gated pieces.  Before the bottom gate there was the sprue which was a round gate.  That's pretty early (18th century?) and before my interests so I can't say exactly when they changed from the sprue to the thin gate mark.

Spiders (three leg skillets for open fire cooking) are usually not of the same quality in their casting as more modern skillets and they are heavier.  Rough surfaces are frequent and pitting may be more common due to their age and not having been used for so many years since fireplaces gave way to stoves for cooking.   Your spider looks typical of many; maybe a little more pitting on the bottom and inside.  The handle looks a bit different, too.  INC is probably supposed to be INCH.  Either they abbreviated inch or the H fell off the pattern.  If you don't like the closed hole in the handle you could alway drill it open and then file the opening to the shape it was supposed to have.

Lots of old iron is very thin.  I think a lot of this castings came from stove makers who were very adept at making thin stove plates (castings).  No idea of the number that survived.  Many old pieces must have been sent to the WWII scrap drives.  Also, a lot of very old iron has not been used in many decades so will just sit there doing nothing or slowing rusting depending on the care or lack of care by the care giver.

No way to determine the maker of your spider or nearly any piece that is not marked with maker's name or some very distinguishing feature that is recognized from another piece from the same maker.

Steve

[Turkey]

Just got back from Cambria, CA this past week end and I saw one identical to this one in an antique shop and they were asking $125 for it. It appeared to be in about the same condition as this one.

[moosejaw]

Just got back from Cambria, CA this past week end and I saw one identical to this one in an antique shop and they were asking $125 for it. It appeared to be in about the same condition as this one.

I'll bet Sharon is dancing a jig!!!!  If you find any more of these for a buck, I'd be happy to pay you for it.  I'd even give you $2 for your trouble, Sharon.   ;D

[Troy_Hockensmith]

Steve,
 Nollie can pitch in here too but what we discussed at the convention makes me question the pre-1900 theory at least for certain type pieces.

 The two that come to mind the most on this theory is the spiders and DO's w/ legs.

 Nollie had his thoughts on Glasscock and my general observations leads me to believe it was true for more than one foundry.

 I would hope no one takes this as gospel as I am just thinking out loud here.  These two type pieces didn't have the demand of other pieces post 1900. Therefore there wouldn't have been as much production and the patterns would not wear and require replacement or updates much or at all. If they were only meeting a small demand I would suspect they continued to use the patterns much later than the 1900 time frame. The Gate would not be an issue on these pieces (like say a regular skillet or DO) and there would be no reason to go through the expense of changing a pattern just to move the gate on a low demand item. I suspect these older style patterns were used at least into the 40's in more than one foundry for spiders and do's w/ legs. While the stovetop type cookware progressed with updated patterns.
 Bottom line is I wouldn't  call a spider pre 1900 just because it has a gate.    

[moosejaw]

The only reason I would quibble with your dates is that I wonder just how much demand there was for these, once modern appliances came into use.  I just can't see a market for spiders in the post 1920's world, except perhaps in rural areas where there wasn't electricity or natural gas.

I would also think if a person needed a spider in the 1900's they may have been more likely to buy one used.  Just some thoughts.  I'm open to more!

[miniwoodworker]

Marty, I remember when electricity came to our rural area. (early 50's) Mom replaced her wood cookstove with an electric. I don't ever remember Mom on Grandmom talking about cooking in a fireplace. Mom was born in 1922. So, I suspect that areas that didn't have natural gas or electric used wood cookstoves.

That leads me to wonder when gas/coal/wood stoves made spiders and other fireplace cooking necessities obsolete.

Just thinking at the keyboard.....

Lee

[Steve_Stephens]

Good points Troy and I agree with you.  So we can't really date a bottom gated piece just by its having a bottom gate.  One has to take the type of piece in question as well as where in the country it was made and, then, it's really only a guess.

Steve

[moosejaw]

That was my line of thinking too, Lee.  I just can't see spiders being made into the mid 1900's.  I think they were primarily used for fireplace cooking and when women "advanced" to wood/coal cook stoves, the need for spiders became less and less.  It's hard for me to believe that these were being made in the 1900's. Does anyone have catalogs from the 1900's that list spiders in them?

[Steve_Stephens]

 I just can't see spiders being made into the mid 1900's.   Does anyone have catalogs from the 1900's that list spiders in them?

Thank you Marty!  Your post caused me to dig and learn.  I have some Xerox's of some small companies and Birmingham Stove and Range is one of them.  Got out the catalog and noticed it was "Issued 1924" and also states "Age of Company; The Atlanta Stove Works and its predeccessor, the Georgia Stove & Range Co., have had a continued existence of thirty-five years."
That must make their founding in 1889 if my math works.

Anyway------- the Atlanta Stove Works catalog does show Leg Skillets (spider) in 8 inch through 14 inch along with Shallow Ovens and Deep Ovens and Lids for all.

A Martin Stove & Range catalog, c.1930 also has Country Skillet (with Lid) Nos. 8-14 and 16 and the lids for those and the Country Ovens is the type with the steel rod insert we were discussing  few days ago.

Much of this country was still pretty primitive in the 1920's and 30's I think so there must have been a small demand for these types of pans.

Steve

[miniwoodworker]

Steve, now you have me wondering if those mentioned in the catalogs had identifying markings and if they still had gatemarks.

Thank you for spending the time to dig out those catalogs. Guess some women were still using fireplaces for cooking then. Or, there was another market, such as lumber camps that fueled the demand for them.

Lee

[Steve_Stephens]

The unfortunate thing about early catalogs is that they were issued prior to the common use of photography of the items so only illustrations are used.  The illus. are not true to shape I think and surely don't show anything like a gate mark.  Of the few catalog copies I have none have much of the iron that is identifyable by distinguishing marks.  Maybe the waffle irons, tea kettles, and some other pieces but not skillets, bowls, etc.  Too bad as it would be great to be able to id more makers and their pieces.

Yeah, 'lumber camps'.  There were probably others who cooked outdoors, too.  And, in the South, farmers were still plowing with mules in the 1960's or later.   Do you think they had new Fisher & Paykal ranges in their shanties?

Steve

[Tom Neitzel]

I like Troy's thoughts about keeping the old patterns around for low demand items.  Makes sense and also would explain the lack of any modern marking on them - why invest the time and money.

I'm glad I never worked in a lumber camp.  Sure sounds primitive.  I did work in a mining exploration camp in central Idaho in the late 60's.  Thirty six air miles from Sun Valley, 10 miles and 7,000 feet higher than the nearest road.  Our camp cook was a pastry chef.  We had a nice commercial gas stove and oven.  The nearly lake, that had a snowfield feeding it, gave us our water and all the trout we wanted.  They would bite an unbaited hook.  Learned several lessons that summer - Don't use a case of dynamite to blast a hole to bury a dead mule-you get a nice hole, but no dirt left around to bury it.  Don't stand around a helicopter that is starting up after an ice storm.  Don't get out of a helicopter until the pilot says to when hovering with only one skid touching the steep slope (looks kind of like a cork coming out of a champange bottle-makes the pilot testy).  It's tough to walk on a 45 degree slope.  Trees fall faster than you think.  Trees are heavier than you think.  And a three-holer outhouse is a little too cozy.  The company bought all the booze we wanted but strangely prohibited firearms (seems a driller liked to lay in his bunk and shoot the knotholes out of the plywood shack walls from the inside out.  Kept you on your toes in camp.)

Apologies, if needed, for drifting.

Tom

[C. Perry Rapier]

Tom, no apologies needed, drift away. I love them stories. That sounds like you had a good time, to me.

[moosejaw]

Tom.....loved the story!

Steve,

Thanks for taking the time to dig those catalogs out.  I agree, much of the country was still very primitive in the early part of the 20th century.  Would you have any guesses as to what date the spiders will still being made?  I could possibly see them being made into the 1920s and maybe the 30's, but after that, with the onset on WWII, it seems most industrial production was geared to the war effort.