April Hirschberger is not the only collector of Le Creuset Set cooking utensils, who owns so many pieces that she can't count them. But she may be the only person who built an entire house around one.
It sparked an obsession.
She had a kitchen stove. Located in the heart of a restored barn in southeastern Pennsylvania, it was custom made to suit a collection of Le Creuset Set Cherry Red Pots, Baking Dishes, Pitchers, Plates and more. Hirschberger, 42, has fragments in mustard yellow and sunflower yellow, Mediterranean blue, Caribbean blue, forest green and lime green. She frequently places and rearranges in stripes, swirls, rainbows, and records everything on Instagram.
“I never could commit to one colour,” she said.
Like Hermes and Chanel, Le Creuset (Crew Say means French, according to official videos, for crucible) is a Garlic legacy brand that flourished in the modern global marketplace, and has become collectable by continuing to function. And collectors have now almost turned what was once a niche brand into a cult, and have been forever engrossed in new lines, colors and shapes.
Some people stick to families of pastel colours. Others focus on single items across the spectrum, such as trivets and pie birds.
“As an Aries, fire and flames talk to me,” said purist Arlene Robilard, who has one of the company's largest collections of original colors in the world.
Last week, to celebrate its 100th anniversary, Le Creuset released its latest colour, Flamme Dorée (Golden Flame). It's close to the original shade and adds gold sparkles, including expensive makeup and gold shruger shots. A few months ago, witnessing New Hugh at an unspecified Williams Sonoma Store sent a 97,000-member Le Creuset Lovers Group on Facebook, causing a frenzy of speculation.
“I have a good relationship with the staff and one showed me what I'd do with the new Sparkle Flame!” an anonymous member posted. (Shotography of a Dutch oven collector.)
Before Le Creuset, most cookware came in shades of grey, black and brown. However, in 1925, two Belgian entrepreneurs (one with cast iron experts and the other with in vitreou enamel made from heat-burning glass), a foundry was built in the northeastern corner of French industrial, deploying new technology. (Although all enamel cast iron pots are made in foundries, other cooking utensils and tableware are produced in Portugal, Thailand, China, and more.)
Thanks to their bright colours, durability and kitchen performance, their cruset pots quickly came into Europe. Cooking utensils began to drip into the US in the 1950s, but with new items introduced this century, sales swelled and revealed that fans could tempt to buy far more cookware than they actually needed.
By expanding the company's colour palette from basics to pastel, neon and neutral, and expanding its line from cooking utensils to tableware, cooking utensils and storage, LeClaget has become a kitchen marketing powerhouse with 90 stores in North America. (Five years after the opening of the first US store in 1988, the company was purchased from French owners by Paul van Zuidam, a South African entrepreneur who pushed for a new strategy.
The company has created collaborations with artists like Sealo Bridges. She uses her black harem toilet jewey pattern and uses brands such as “Star Wars”, “Harry Potter”, and Hello Kitty. (The US is the largest market, and Japan isn't too late.) It also outpaced the strategic drops of limited items like black heart-shaped Dutch ovens that sell out as soon as they reappear, appearing on reselling sites such as Etsy and eBay.
Bread recipes that baker Jim Lahei never baked in a Dutch oven went viral in the early 2000s (and reappeared during the pandemic), and Luklsett became the most popular new piece of decades in 2022, said US marketer Sarah Whitaker.
Like the three-day event held last week in San Jose, California, the pop-up factory sales generate huge lines and enthusiastic social media posts, especially among VIP ticket buyers who have the opportunity to buy a $50 “mystery box” that can only be opened after the sale is over. Each box contains overstocked items of at least $350 (but up to $1,000) and has been discontinued, with fans filming suspenseful unbox videos in the car park and posting them to Tiktok.
Outside factory sales and outlet stores, pots can be very expensive. The largest retail price is up to $750. A Dutch oven known as a “goo spot” is big enough to roast 15 pounds of birds.
When Netflix debuted a new lifestyle show starring Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, last month, it was the white lukul set pot she used among many reasons that some viewers called her “unrelevant.” Her cooking utensils were singled as being too expensive and untouched. This is a criticism that some black women say they are based on racist and outdated assumptions. Many of them emphasized showing off their collections on social media, like Charzae Cameron of Atlanta.
“We've had these for years – this isn't new,” Cameron, 42, cited wedding registries, outlet stores and holiday gifts as an opportunity to build a collection. (In an interview at her home last month, Meghan said it's ridiculous that everyone thinks that modern black women only use traditional cast iron frying pans.)
From the 1960s, two ambitious domestic empires were built on the sturdy platforms of Williams Sonoma on the West Coast and Le Creuset, a ceramic barn in the East. In 1965, my parents (Hanna, 82, and Jeffrey Moskin, 83) bought the pots they still use every day.
When they got married that year, both were trying to escape the family's cooking claustrophobia. A mother from a strict kosher home in Brooklyn (Jelly Calff's feet, margarine) and a father from a suburb of Long Island (orange soda, frozen vegetables). His father was in the restaurant supply business, so my parents got off to a good start when they got married: a huge black garland restaurant stove and a thick aluminum frying pan.
But they didn't feel they were heading down the road until they had a pot of Le Craigettes, a flame-colored Dutch oven, and a pot with a heavy lid that would help them master the recipes by Julia Child, Richard Olney and Elizabeth David. (At the time, everyone in their circle wanted to be French home cooks, preferably someone who lived in the countryside.)
Wipes like the Salton Yogurt Maker and the Romart Puffera Cotta Casserole have passed through the kitchen, but after 60 years no other pots have been added to the rack. So I didn't know there was something like a muddy frying pan until I graduated from college.
Lynn Rossett Kasper, 82, a culinary historian, cooking teacher and retired podcast host, said he began using the pot as soon as he arrived in the US.
“It wasn't easy to find something that allowed you to stew or slowly saute and get the right kind of thing you like,” she said. Because even top American cookware like Farberware is mostly lightweight aluminum. The dutch ovens from her well-used Lekulset will be on sale at auction for her cooking collection next week, but she said, “They are just a few of the many people who have gone through my life.”
Haley Sipe, product director for a tech company living in Orange County, California, called me Thursday on a report from a San Jose pop-up sale. She and two friends from UCLA's MBA program went north on the 300-mile drive after work Wednesday. Then I woke up early and kicked out the line and the parking lot.
The 34-year-old Sipe already owns several colorful pots that have been handed over from her mother and sister, but since her marriage last year, she has built her collection in neutrals such as Oyster Gray, Sea Salt Pale Blue and Brioche Beige.
Her 90-minute shopping slot holy grail was the bread oven. (Slots are shifted every 120 minutes, giving staff the opportunity to order from the mess.) “There's a crazy dash at first.
To open the mystery box, the three friends met with other participants in a nearby parking lot. There, collectors are ready to barter, folding tables and sometimes letting go from home. The process was an emotional roller coaster, she said: the first box had the perfect set of white Dutch ovens, but it wasn't her. Next is mainly a pale pink with chiffon, a colour no women particularly likes cooking utensils. Her own box was filled with a section of flame. “Orange is not included in my colour palette,” she emphasized.
Still, for around $1,400, Sipe went home with a black writer, a Rhone (wine coloured) pot and 10 other ten other pieces.
And a bread oven? Except for the flames, the entire spectrum was sold out by the time she got inside. (Whitaker of Le Creuset said Flame is losing popularity and the company is “emphasizing” its production.
Robillard of Flame Collector has over 1,000 pieces of original colours, including rare items like Tostador in 1955, George Foreman Grill Prototype, a kind of George Foreman Grill Prototype, American industrial designer in France, and Raymond Loewy, who created the original Coca-Cola can, Barcalounger, Shell Logo.
Robilard, 73, contacted the Netherlands to wash flea markets and has been stored in industrial shelves that must be bolted to the wall to support its weight, with a dedicated room in Apopka, Florida, for collection.
I'm not interested in factory sales and new works. Her current fixation is a vintage sangria pitcher once discovered on a South American resale site. “Hunting is always fun.”
Follow New York Times' cuisine on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Tiktok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times cuisine with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.
