This Morning's Finds

[Christy T.]

I got some goodies at the swap meet this morning. The first one is a Griswold waffle iron. The two pieces fit together nice and tight with no warping. I grind wheat into flour using a cast iron grain grinder and can make waffles from scratch, so I'll have fun with this piece. Any idea as to the date it might have been made?



The next piece is this corn bread pan. It'll need some cleaning up, but looks useful. It's hard to read in the picture, but the top lines say 954 D. Any idea what years it might have been made?



And the last one is more of a question than anything else. I think some cast iron cookware manufacturers made other things out of cast iron, too? Am I mistaken? I also got this cast iron rooster (door stop?) this morning. Any chance it might have been made by a known foundry?

 

[SeanD]

Im not sure, but the rooster might be a Boot Jack? I have a cast iron bug looking thing that I was told on here is a Boot Jack. You screw it to the floor on your porch, or wherever you take your shoes off, you use it to help pull your boots off with out bending over. I am probably wrong, it may be a door stop, but it could be a boot jack.

 

[Christy T.]

Im not sure, but the rooster might be a Boot Jack? I have a cast iron bug looking thing that I was told on here is a Boot Jack. You screw it to the floor on your porch, or wherever you take your shoes off, you use it to help pull your boots off with out bending over. I am probably wrong, it may be a door stop, but it could be a boot jack.

I don't know. There is a metal tongue on the bottom that allows it to stand up, but the back is covered with paint that would cover any markings, if there are any.

 

[D_Madden]

I don't know. There is a metal tongue on the bottom that allows it to stand up, but the back is covered with paint that would cover any markings, if there are any.

it's a doorstop... there are lots of different kinds of iron boot jacks... but this is not a boot jack.
there are some books on cast iron doorstops and other 'figurative' iron. publisher Schiffer (the same as the red and blue books) has one on figurative cast iron, a collector's guide. and it references a book by author Jeanne Bertoia (of paducah kentucky) Doorstops: Identification & Values published by Collector Books in 1989. The book states that doorstops and other figurative iron dates back to the late 1700's and up into the 1930's in the united states (the earlier dates are possibly pieces from England)... and there were dozens of foundries that made doorstops and bookends other than Lodge and Martin and other foundries that primarily made hollowware. The book doesn't do much in the way of identifying makers or values.. but it has lots of pictures showing the range of different designs of doorstops and bookends etc.
as far as the bread stick pan... there were about 18 different variations of that pan made by griswold... and its difficult to narrow down a time period based on the markings... the earliest versions might have been bottom gated and unmarked and often did not have holes cast into the handles, then they added the pattern number and later more and more text on the backs.