I'm not sure if it's 30s or 40s yet. I am working with the idea that the model No. will help me date it best. I thought of this when I saw a site that sells Wear-ever pieces that shows current and former No.s in a table per item page. I did find a coffee pot which mentions the actual patent pending date as 1902, but does not have any No. above the mark. Further research tonight gave some more weight to the No.-gives-rough-date-range-notion.
This coffee pot pictured above is
No. 956. Apparently the seller looked up the also stamped patent number which was dated 1930. The biggest tell that this might be a close cousin of mine date wise is the lid top, which is very similar to the concentric circles on the top of my kettle. The handle has a similar fastener/method, though the "tail" on my handle was actually molded smaller so it could be metal strapped around that narrowed end bit without the metal bumping out from the line of the handle instead of the plumbing like seating above. I also found a kettle on MOMA,
No. 1403, that is dated 1932-33. That looks very similar to
this ebay listing which is No. 3054. From a random reddit post I found about a baking pan, there was some mention about how patents only lasted X years or so, which I guess led patent holders to do a minor change to keep it or something. I don't know diddly about patents, but the gap between the MOMA kettle number and the ebay listing number is rather large. Oh interesting. I just found
another one that looks like them that is No. 3052. I need to stop looking at ebay.
Another neat detail I remembered noticing before, but was reminded is that the inside of the metal curve at the top of the handle has many pin point sized depressions (possibly stamped) on the inside where you wouldn't normally see it. I'm wondering if that was done to help relieve stress on the metal and/or make bending it easier.
I also realized after looking at the maker's mark that I was fairly certain we have other pieces from them. Turns out we did! I didn't check all my bakeware yet, but this roasting pan we stumbled upon not too long ago is a No. 312, which if my assessment on the No. giving a window of possible date, then it might be even older since similar pans are now in the 33000 No. range:
I did find some kettle/coffee pots on etsy that are definitely 50s. One of them was one of the seller's mother's wedding presents from '51, and you can see how the handle is more squared than soft round like the 30s example above:
Ones I've seen that are labeled 40s (with no note about why the date is given) are similar in that they are more square shape of the 50s but plainer--none have the design ours does on the handle so far.
Edit: Spoke too soon, found a 1949 advert:
I've actually been wondering if they were one of the companies that sort of rolled back production during WWII, which might explain the lack of 40s items, as well as the gaps of time that seems to go by between model numbers as opposed to after when they seemed to be rolled out more often. No idea how to check that against records.
I also stumbled upon a vintage advert pic from ebay for a 1933 Wear-ever kettle of various sizes, ranging in price from $2.75 to $3.50. The model looks close to the MOMA one (or the later No. ebay one..because they are darn similar!).
Ours is definitely a daily driver. There's evidence that someone had it on open flame at some point, which I think required the heavy bottom scouring that makes the mark a bit hard to read. Might be it was a gas stove, or they actually put it on a campfire grill. (Not sure how the Bakelite would hold up if the latter is true, so that theory may be dumb.)
Apparently there is a hyphen in the name though the wiki title doesn't have it. So it's really Wear-ever. I was pretty amazed they date back to Victorian times. "
WearEver Cookware can trace its origins back to 1888 when Charles Martin Hall, a young inventor from Oberlin, Ohio discovered an inexpensive way to smelt aluminum by perfecting the electrochemical reduction process that extracted aluminum from bauxite ore." So I'm going to adjust the thread title to reflect that.
Sorry if this was too much of a recount of my research. But I figure some folks might find at least some interesting.
