Please Don't Quote Me By Caralee Aschenbrenner Back in the 1870s-80s there was a news item in the Lanark weekly which told about a family out in Georgetown who had all come down with a terrible stomach sickness. So ill they had to have the doctor come and who diagnosed their condition as food poisoning brought on from the coffee which had stood much too long on the back of the cook stove, simmering and cooling, simmering and cooling alternatively in an old tin pot or of some unhealthy sort, and whose cracks and rust spots had contributed to the poisonous elements in the beverage. When PDQ ME finds the article it will be printed . . . . There's just too many files to go through! But it was an item to remember, but not an uncommon occurrence

Back in the nineteenth century, and long before, there were several kinds of cooking utensils which, indeed, added to the deadliness of the menu and besides lack of refrigeration or cleanliness, etc. There was iron, tin, copper and brass among the hardware of home plus other combinations sometimes made by local craftsmen who had no guidelines to follow or the full agenda of what could or could not be cooked in certain materials. Such as in more recent years when the beans would be baked in brightly colored pots decorated with lead paints!

Many were the illnesses brought on by pots leaching their poisons, but who knew? Then, at the nation's Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876, a newly invented cookware came on exhibit. It was excitingly greeted as innovative, if not history-changing. Graniteware.

It was enthusiastically hyped (though truthfully) as "lightweight, elegant, clean and everlasting." It had the "advantages of glass but the strength of metal," Imagine not having to strain your arms or back in lifting an iron kettle full of stew from the cooking range or a huge coffee pot full of boiling water with its inherent danger.

Graniteware was also known as enamelware, granite, ironware, glazed ware, just granite and agate, its color and mottled pattern looking like the mineral, agate. No matter what it was called it was a sensation - and pretty, too.

The most important characteristic was that it was unaffected by acidic foods and so easy to keep clean as opposed to the others. As you can see in the advertisement dated 1910, the word POISON rated highly as a marketing tool. "No Poison has EVER been found in the Enamelizing of Agate!" Leaching of metals or chemical reactions weren't a part of agate ware. Today, extant pieces might have a little chip or two but they really held up pretty well.

Another plus for enamelware was the numbers of items which could be made in that material. It could be limitless as the following list will inform you; saucepans, rice, farina and milk boilers, cruller and potato fryers with perforated inner pots, butter kettles with fanciful knobs in white, Preserve kettles, griddles, broilers, stew pots (shallow) colanders, dippers, basting spoons, skimmers, pie plates, fry pans, flasks, water buckets, wash basins, wine coolers, muffin pans, cake molds in octagon shape or turban and turk's head shapes and a variety of cake pans, tube pans with cake molds with twelve sides which were, hipster-like, called dodecahedral by the well-informed. For the table there were dinner plates, children's alphabet-embossed plates, mugs, soup bowls, trays, meat dishes. Toilet articles included slop jars, chamber pails and pots, foot tubs, water carriers, water pitchers and matching bowls, soap dishes which hung or had covers. Candlestick holders-all sizes and shapes. Somewhat rare were cruet sets with glass condiment containers and a metal wall rack with an assortment of hanging kitchen utensils. Coffee pots, teapots and, oh, we could go on and on!

Catalog pages, here reduced in size, show that, for instance, a 4 ? quart chamber pot could be had by the retailer, a dozen for $9, drinking mugs - $2 a dozen. How reasonable!

"Old English Gray Ware," the familiar gray being the most common, was just one of the mottled shades, however, there were also light blue, dark blue, turquoise, black, green and brown called onyx. Those were all mottled prettily but there were all white pieces after 1900 which had a blue edging. Were they hospital ware? In an "American Monthly" magazine in 1900 an advertisement by the "Agate L & G Manufacturing Co." stated that of the seventeen companies then making enamelware in the nation, an "analysis of the coating revealed that in every instance either Arsenic, Lead and Antimony and in a few cases, all three of those insidious poisons had been found!!"

In the manufacture of enamelware it prompted buyers to realize that the fusing point was not reached until the iron of which the frame was made, was about to melt, it was thereby combined with the pure vitreous composition which formed a clinch or perfect union which no subsequent heat could destroy. That sold it. Most companies used a paper label to identify the manufacturer although the early product of the Lalance and Grosjean Co. whose advertisements appear here, burnt their logo, "L & G" into the bottom of the item.

Boasting of their serious intent, the St. Louis Stamping Co. (Missouri) requested their output's trademark (a granite pot) be read to note that it was "patented" which had been done May 30, 1876, early in the Centennial year of the USA.

Enamelware is still produced today and many old pieces exist to tempt a buyer like me, for instance, whose utility room walls are rampant with the blues. So we see that Agate ware was popular here in the Northwest. Some of that which you see in flea markets or antique shops is really only thirty-forty years old and its "New" colors like red, yellow. black and bright blue are a little too garish to call old. But the yellow sure looks great filled with stew or chili or dumplings and chicken gravy or . . . . OK, OK its May, no time for the hot and heavy. Look instead at the interesting patterns on your graniteware. You might find Italy or the state of Maine, Tasmania or the profile of Elvis in the mottled finish.

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