Strange coincidence

Of all the posts I've done since I started this little enterprise last December, one from last February has had way, way, way more hits than any other, mostly due to Google searches involving either a certain kind of Le Creuset hollow-handled sacepan or Dru Holland cast iron cookware (you can read that whole post here if you like).  The strange coincidence of my post title today involves the saucepans:

Le Creuset hollow-handled saucepans.

The research I did at the time lead me to believe that this particular style of Le Creuset pans with the fat hollow metal handles that are all of a piece with the rest of the pot originated with another company, Cousances, that was bought out by Le Creuset in 1957.  The serendipitous new find I've made throws a whole new element into the game:

Sorry, rather crummy phone pic here.

As you can see, there is a definite resemblance between these two little pots and the little pots above!  The handles and style are the same, and then there's that gorgeous orange flame enamel.  The interiors are different - gray on these, and white on the Le Creusets - and unfortunately there's only one lid with this set, and it may not be original to the set, despite the color match - it's not cast iron, it's much lighter.  Also these two are the same size.  I haven't gotten all four of them together in the same place for comparison, but I don't think these are any bigger than the larger of the two Le Creusets.  

But where it gets interesting is this.  These are neither Le Creuset nor Cousances.  These are marked Trianon, Made in Belgium.  So of course, I asked good old Google about "enamel cast iron trianon", and found... not a ton of information.  The first thing returned is the most interesting.  It's a page from the Milwaukee Journal from December 5th, 1952 with an ad for Trianon "Terraflame":

As you can see it shows not-very-good black and white illustrations of various pots and pans, lettered, with prices listed like in a catalog.  G. looks awfully familiar with its fat little handle, and apparently, for Christmas 1952, it could be had (size-depending, I assume) for $3.20-$5.70.  The image is terrible, so it's hard to say if the lid looks anything like the one I got with my thrifted treasures.

But what interests me about the whole thing is... I thought I had settled in my mind that the design of these little pots came from the Cousances company, since they predated the ones made by Le Creuset.  But Le Creuset bought out Cousances in 1957.  The above ad proves the same design was being made by Trianon at least as early as 1952, so they could well have been doing it first, but I can't find much else out there about Trianon enameled cast iron.  Anybody out there a connoisseur who can fill me in with the scoop?

In the mean time, check out a couple of great link-ups here:

 

Cap Creation's Thrifty Love Link Party and The Thrifty Groove's Thrifty Things Friday

Booth update - no more cockeyed suitcases

It bugged me all last week, those suitcases hanging crookedly like that.  When I did it, I thought it was jaunty, but when I saw the picture it just looked sloppy.  So when I went in on Tuesday, I rectified the situation.  I also found that the gorgeous Jens Quistgaard Dansk pot sold - my biggest-ticket sale ever so far - yay me!

I also learned that the month, in terms of sales, is actually the 25th-25th.  I apparently wasn't very observant last month, because it's written right there on the sheet.  So the pot wasn't on March's sheet.  But enough was on there that I still covered March's $125 rent and the commission and the extra 3% the credit card companies eat up when people pay with plastic, and the amount I paid for the items that sold.  But, like February, I only really made maybe five or six dollars actual profit.  Still, with the pot kicking off April sales, and the bunch of new items I put in the booth last week, and the (awesome) items I added today, I think I've got a good shot at beating that in April.  

So here's what I added to the booth this week:

The Disney Big Golden Books I showed you last week, plus one more (Uncle Remus Stories) and an awesome 1960s Better Homes & Gardens Handyman's Book.

The super cool Needlecrafts tote I also showed you last week, plus the cool orange trivet
hanging behind it.  I'm guessing both are 70s?

You know I had to replace the Dansk pot, and what better way than with a pair of Le Creuset Orange Flame saucepans from the late 50s-early 60s (love the handles) and a similarly orange flamey Dru Holland cocotte.  You may have seen both in this post awhile back.

A sweet little pair of softest leather vintage ecru peep-toe low-heels from Neiman Marcus.

And here's the booth-shot this week:

Kenrick Antique Mall, Shrewsbury, MO, booth #78 - come and get it!

And in appreciation of Springtime and the coming of Easter weekend, I leave you with a picture I took last Sunday that makes me smile:

Pretty fungus!

Learnin' about my treasures: Dru Holland cast iron/enamel cookware

I've had a strange string of luck with orange cast iron/enamel cookware just recently.  First I found a pair of orange flame Le Crueset saucepans -  at the Goodwill on South Lindbergh:

Classic Flame colored Le Creuset saucepans - sizes 14 and 18.

I did a little research to try and date this style of saucepan with the fat hollow iron handles.  Best I could find was an Etsy listing for a Le Creuset pot of this style that said (without attribution) that it was made in the 60s, and one blog that showed some similarly shaped iron/enamel pots with different knobs that were Cousances brand, which Wikipedia says Le Creuset bought out in 1957, but then the same blog said that the famous Le Creuset Flame color was inherited from Cousances, which is untrue according both to Wikipedia, which says Le Creuset introduced the Flame color in 1934, and the Le Creuset websites "our story" section, which says Flame was the first color they ever used, and was inspired by the color of the molten iron before it was cast.  Of course, the Le Creuset website fails to mention the fact that while Le Creuset is made in France and has always been considered ever-so-French, both of the founders were Belgian.  Still, the picture on the blog with the iffy color info are definitely the same style pots, and one of them has a sticker on it still, so I guess it really was a Cousance style, so the (early?) 60s does seem a reasonable guess for when Le Creuset would have been making the style.

Maybe a week after the Le Creuset find, I found a larger, older looking French oven/cocotte/casserole in a similar orange:

The markings on it say "Dru No 8", and while I've known about Le Crueset since I was a teenager, I'd never heard of Dru, so I asked my good friend Google about them, and found lots of vintage pots and pans for sale, none of which looked a lick like mine.  They were all in white/yellow/blue/green and had little tulip patterns on them, like so:

Nice, but not my style really.  I searched through pages of Google images but the only time I found plain orange ones was when they were on the same page as some of the country-kitchen-tulipy stuff, but were by Le Crueset or one of a handful of other companies that make such things.  So then I started looking around for just plain info on the company.  A few different sites had bits of information.  Mostly that the company was called Dru Holland, the pots were made in Holland, the company went out of business sometime in or before the early 70s, and nobody really knows all that much about it.

Then, I finally found a post in the Amazon forums from someone who purported to know something about it:

"My Uncle Robert E. Evans started a companey in the 50's after he got back from war and imported the Dru Iron from Holland. There is an article in the Boston sunday Herald, April 28, 1957 that talks about his business and how he got started."

I saw mention on a couple of different sites that various colors of the Dru pots and pans were from different eras.  The earliest ones mentioned before I found the Amazon thread, from the 1930s, had the tulip pattern.  But, quoting the nephew of the importer again:


" The orange with grey inside was the first line. Next came the blue, green and last the yellow. Uncle Bob's cookware was featured in Better Homes and Garden issue in the late 50's."

So it appears that I have a very old, and very rare (rare enough that there are no Google images of it at least) pot on my hands  that goes pretty nicely with my two Le Creuset via Cousances saucepans.  Serendipity!

Can you imagine the yummy meals that were prepared in these beauties?  Mmm....