Adding an antique or vintage stove to a contemporary or period kitchen can transform the busiest room in your home into a working museum. Whether it’s a mammoth, Victorian, cast-iron range crowned with an ornamental splash back or a more modest, boxy, 21-inch O’Keefe & Merritt apartment stove from the 1940s, an antique or vintage stove makes a powerful design statement.
Most Victorian-era stoves were made from cast iron and designed to burn wood, coal, or both. Manufacturers generally sold regionally, so the brands are not as important from a collecting standpoint, as with stoves from, say, the 1930s and 1940s. What matters most to contemporary collectors of antique stoves is the level of ornamentation—in short, the more the merrier.
Pennsylvania-based manufacturer Floyd, Wells & Co. made a host of ranges under the Irving brand—the Irving, Grand Irving, Loyal Irving, Prize Irving, True Irving, Rose Irving, an...
Another type of antique Victorian stove that is perhaps more popular with collectors than kitchen ranges, simply because it is smaller and easier to move around, is the pot-belly stove, which was typically used for heat rather than cooking and is known variously as a cannon, globe, or egg stove.
The most utilitarian and unadorned of these stoves is generally only going to be worth anything at all if it is still functioning. More ornate pot bellies—with mica windows in the feed doors, matching foot rails, and deep decorative ribs—may be prized for their beauty alone.
At the beginning of the 20th century, stoves that also burned gas began to be more common. Steel slowly started to replace cast iron, and the most prized stoves were coated in white porcelain, to give the appliances a spotless and sanitary sheen. Simple configurations include perhaps four burners on the left with a small oven at chest height to the right. More complex arrangements increase the burner count to six and add a second oven and perhaps even a warmer.
The 1930s and 1940s were the glory decades for vintage stoves. This is the era when brands like Chambers, Dixie, Gaffers & Sattler, O’Keefe & Merritt, Roper, Tappan, and Wedgewood dominated. Taking their collective inspiration from Art Deco and Streamline Moderne design, these stoves were gleaming battleships of porcelain and chrome, with polished handles, built-in clocks, and colors that ranged from hospital white to royal blue to candy-apple red.
One interesting sub-genre of stove collecting is the field of camping stoves. Today we associate camping stoves with the Coleman brand, and, indeed, Coleman has been a leader in this field since the 1920s. But other manufacturers were also producing fine portable stoves, including the Kampkook and Readykook from American Gas Machine Co., Clayton & Lambert, Primus, and the generically named Model 42A Senior from Wehrle.
Interviews & Articles
The Colors of Fiesta

I started as a collector and I’m a web designer, so I thought I would design a website from my passion. I threw it up there and pe… [more]
Best of the Web (“Hall of Fame”)
Gas Pressure Lanterns, Lamps and Stoves

Terry Marsh’s beautiful showcase of gas-pressure lanterns, lamps, stoves, irons, and heaters from the 1920s o… [read review or visit site]
Stoveburner.com

A stunning collection of 162 images of stoveburners, those corroded cast iron elements that power stoves, broilers,… [read review or visit site]
Feeding America

This archive of 76 influential American cookbooks from the late 1700s to early 1900s, assembled by the Michigan St… [read review or visit site]
Tupper Diva

Kristian McManus’ fresh, airtight collection of Tupperware catalogs and related ephemera from the 1950s and 6… [read review or visit site]
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Recent News: Stoves
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Lost treasure found on Manning Court
East Village Magazine, June 9thDad, being a surveyor, paid more attention to monument markers than he would to the beauty of a cobblestoned porch or an antique stove that lay within. There they were — survey markers, placed along the property lines in the neighborhood. The markers ...Read more
They took the Leap and it's paid off handsomely
Irish Examiner, June 6thHaving originally been an antique stove shop, the Old Mill's expansion into handpicked homewares and interesting interiors items came about to fill a niche in the market. “We have a lot of space here, particularly after doing a basement conversion, so...Read more
Too hot to handle
Rawlinstimes, May 31st“Then you figure out what parts you need and try to get those parts. That's quite a challenge.” Since the parts haven't been made in 50 or 60 years and very few foundries are willing to make them, Ross has to trade for parts through antique stove...Read more
Map Listings and Addresses for the Garage Sales
Platte Chronicle, May 28thAntique stove, hutch, breadmaker, treadmill, antique chairs & lamps, horse tack & Breyer horses - antique Zenith radio. 3 - 21942 Co. Road P Friday, Saturday, Sunday 8-5. Saddles, tools, collectibles, oak furniture, Longaberger, American Girl, old...Read more
Jan Corey Arnett: Difference between men and women? Keep looking
Battle Creek Enquirer, May 24thIt was useless to point out that one corner of our garage is taken up by a large freezer, another is occupied by an antique stove and a third is obscured by sections of laminated countertop we were going to do something with a decade ago. Only one...Read more
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