Griswold marks

How to read it

The Hagen History Center, Erie County’s historical society, says the business began in 1865 as the Selden & Griswold Manufacturing Company, and that after Samuel Selden died in 1882 Matthew Griswold bought out the Seldens and the firm became the Griswold Manufacturing Company. Its first mark said Erie. The company’s catalogues of 1888–89 and 1895–96 sold its hollow ware under the name ERIE, and the museum’s curator describes a “spider logo”, a skillet with legs and the word Erie on its back, used from 1870 to 1905. The cross in a double circle followed. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has a No. 8 Griswold frying pan with the logo cast into its underside, GRISWOLD in block letters with CAST IRON SKILLET arched above it, and ERIE PA., U.S.A. and the pattern number 704 below. The US trademark register describes the design today as a concentric circle with a Greek cross inside and the word GRISWOLD on the horizontal of the cross; it was registered in 2020 to Griswold Cast Iron Company, LLC, of Erie, for skillets, with first use in 2018.

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Slant, large block and small block

Collectors name the cross logo’s versions by their lettering. The Cast Iron Collector, a reference site for collectors, calls the first the slant logo, for its italic GRISWOLD, and says it was the first Griswold trademark used on nearly everything the company made. Around 1920 the lettering became block capitals, the large block logo, with additions such as CAST IRON SKILLET and ERIE, PA, U.S.A.; the Smithsonian pan matches that description. About 1939 the logo was made smaller and the town shortened to ERIE, PA., which collectors call the small block logo. Before the cross, the same site records the marks SELDEN & GRISWOLD and, from around 1906, GRISWOLD’S ERIE.

When the company began

The dates do not agree. The Hagen History Center gives 1865 in one post and “founded in Erie in 1868” in another; the company’s own catalogue of about 1920 says “Established 1866”; the Cast Iron Collector says Griswold was in business with the Selden brothers from 1868 and bought them out in 1884, where the Hagen gives 1882.

Griswold after Griswold

Wagner Cast Iron’s company history says the Randall Company, which then owned Wagner, bought Griswold in 1957, and that the two brands were traded together after that; the Cast Iron Collector says Randall’s Wagner division bought Griswold from McGraw Edison that year. According to the Cast Iron Collector, later Griswold-marked pieces were made from modified Wagner patterns with new versions of the logo, and the Griswold trademark was not used after 1973. For the Wagner marks, see Wagner Ware.

Who owns the mark

The Cast Iron Collector says a bank sold the Wagner and Griswold trademark rights to American Culinary Corp. of Willoughby, Ohio, in 2000.

In the museum

The Hagen History Center holds about 700 pieces of Griswold, and its curator notes that the company also made enameled cast iron in red, green, yellow and turquoise in the 1920s and 1930s.