J D Weed & Co

AGruber

New member
I found a couple of spider skillets today with the label J D Weed & co. The store had them labeled as Savannah, GA. That leads me to believe that either (a) this is the same company as Weed and Cornwell (maybe under an offshoot brand where Weed "went solo"), or (b) that the shop owner Googled J D Weed & co, found Weed and Cornwell, and guessed that it must be the same Weed. I'm kind of leaning towards (a), because the location of the store is only a few hours from Savannah. On the other hand, the tag labeled it as being from the 1950s, which is not when Weed and Cornwell operated (but of course that may have been a typo of "1850s").

Has anyone ever seen the J D Weed & Co mark before, or know the history of the Weed and Cornwell foundry well enough to tell me about these pieces?

I included pictures of both skillets. One had the mark on the bottom and the other didn't, but they clearly are from the same source by their design.

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---------- Post added at 08:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:58 PM ----------

I've looked into this a little further and found some J D Weed & Co invoices on eBay being sold as ephemera. They are dated 1927 and have in the letterhead "1816 J D Weed & Co Wholesale Hardware, farm implements, mill supplies Savannah, GA".

I also found an old eBay auction of a 10 gallon cauldron with J D Weed & Co. The about text included,
this company started in 1816 there has been 5 generations in the same location in Savannah Georgia. I spoke to the current owner and he said his Great-grand Father had these Kettles made with there Company name on them in the mid 1870's to the early 1880's

It looked quite like the cauldrons I've seen from Weed & Cornwell so maybe the skillets and cauldron were from before the business took on Cornwell as a partner?
 
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During that era, the copying of designs was rampant, not so much in that one foundry's pattern makers copied another's, but in that (1) patterns used by more than one foundry were potentially created by the same pattern maker, or (2) one foundry used the actual pans of another as the basis for their patterns. Looking at the handles of these two, there is similarity, but the markings are too generic to be confirmed as being of the same foundry. The shape of the legs, particularly at their bases also appears dissimilar.

The number of collectors seeking info on pre-1880s items is unfortunately far smaller than those interested in that from 1880s-1957ish. Also unfortunate is the amount of info available on that earlier era is small to non-existent.
 
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