Crate&Barrel

The Chicago couple Gordon and Carole Segal established Crate&Barrel in 1962. Like Terence Conran in the United Kingdom, they realized that others would enjoy the design and quality of kitchen and home products that they had found on journeys within the United States and abroad. The idea came to them while doing the washing up.

They renovated a 1,700-square-foot former elevator factory in Chicago’s Old Town district. The decor was, by necessity, very cheap; the walls were lined with crating timber and the products displayed in packing crates and barrels. The first store employed three people and offered gourmet cookware and other contemporary housewares in greater variety and at better prices than elsewhere in Chicago.

The first Crate&Barrel mail-order catalogue was produced in 1967 and the first store outside Chicago opened in 1977. Crate&Barrel opened in San Francisco in 1985 and in New York in 1995. In 1998, it entered a partnership with the world’s largest mail-order company, Otto Versand of Hamburg, Germany.

Crate&Barrel has grown into one of the most influential retailers in the United States, with over eighty stores. Its flagship store opened on North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, in 1990. Although the store has been described as resembling a giant food processor, its main forms are a cube with a cylindrical attachment, literally a crate and barrel.

Like Habitat, Crate&Barrel helped create “lifestyle” shopping and influenced both consumers and other retailers. Apart from furniture and linens it sells a wide range of stylish appliances from manufacturers such as KitchenAid and Dualit. The company has a strong philanthropic policy and passes unsold goods on to local charities. It also has financially supported AIDS-related causes.

The Influence of the Fitted Kitchen

While feminists and household economists of the rational school had long espoused the concept of the fitted kitchen, few homes had fitted kitchens until after World War II. The United States was well ahead of Britain in this respect, and U.S. companies began to use the desirability of the fitted kitchen as a marketing vehicle for a range of appliances in the late 1940s. In terms of cookers, this brought an emphasis on ergonomic design and materials. Surplus wartime stocks meant that aluminum became an affordable lightweight option for some cooker parts. Features such as glass doors, introduced in the 1930s, and eye-level grills were heralded as aids to efficiency and economy of movement. The 1950s fitted kitchen also prompted the revival of the split-level cooker with a waist-level or eye-level oven. The term “split level” is used to signify that the cooking units are not integrated vertically, but dispersed horizontally. Split-level electric cookers first appeared in the early years of electric cookers and were initially the more common design in the United States. However, their double width meant that they were too large to fit comfortably in smaller kitchens. In the 1960s, in search of new selling points, manufacturers developed features that extended the potential for producing meals requiring different types of cooking. One option was the cooker with two ovens, allowing simultaneous cooking at different temperatures. Oven fans helped to distribute the heat more evenly, facilitating the use of the whole oven, while attachments, such as rotisserie spits, tailored the oven for specialized cooking.

The standard cooktop held four fast radiant rings, and boiling ring technology changed little from the 1930s to 1966, when the ceramic electric hob, or cooktop, appeared. The ceramic hob was the commercial result of an accidental discovery at the Corning Glass Works in the United States in 1952. A malfunctioning furnace produced an opalescent, tough glass with distinctive thermal properties. Heat from bare electric elements placed beneath the glass, and demarcated by patterns on the upper surface, is conducted vertically, but not horizontally. Not only is the ceramic hob extremely efficient, but with its flat surface, it is easy to clean and available as a work surface when not in use for cooking. Manufacturers also gave much attention to the cleanability of ovens. One “self-cleaning” method, introduced in 1969, was the application of a grease-resistant coating to the oven interior. This is known as catalytic cleaning. Another method, introduced in 1978, was pyrolitic cleaning, whereby a short burst of maximum heat after cooking prevents the build-up of hardened grease. Cleanliness was also the motive for the development of the electric cooker hood, which is placed directly above the hob to absorb greasy vapors and cooking smells. Such hoods contain an extractor or exhaust fan and filters. Depending on the hood design, the extracted air may either be recirculated in the kitchen after filtration or vented outdoors.

Since the 1970s, when the fitted kitchen approached its peak of popularity, manufacturers have designed kitchen appliances to fit in with the standard sizes of kitchen units. This also prompted the evolution of the split-level cooker into the modular cooker, whereby the oven, hob, and grill might be completely separate, self-contained units. Modularity has allowed consumers to mix and match gas and electric cooking units to suit their individual needs or preferences. The German manufacturer Neff has been particularly noted for its modular cookers. The Italian company Zanussi has focused more on offering a range of colors, finishes, and style details. For example, the Zanussi ID cooker (1999) could be tailored in terms of types of doors, handles, and knobs, as well as color and finish, to achieve a customized specification. Another trend, associated with a revived interest in cooking as an art rather than a necessity, has created a consumer market for the cooker built to professional catering standards and usually high-tech in design. The latest development in hob technology is the induction hob, which dispenses with heating elements in favor of magnetic heat induction coils. While a British company, the Falkirk Iron Company, experimented with induction cooking in the 1920s, the idea lay dormant until the 1990s. Price, familiarity, and availability of types of energy were the prevailing influences on choice of cooker in 1900, but today the equivalent factors are more likely to be price, performance, convenience, and design. These factors mean that gas and electric cookers are likely to co-exist on more or less equal terms for the foreseeable future.

Cooker Design

While gas-cooker manufacturers tended to be more innovative in design terms than their electric-cooker counterparts during the interwar period, the time lag was much shorter. After 1920, gas and electric cookers gradually evolved their own identity through the use of new materials and surface finishes. Manufacturers began to apply vitreous enamel, which had previously been used sparsely on splashbacks and cooktops, to all surfaces, outside and inside. Although mottled black enamel was used in conjunction with white, mottled grey enamel and white enamel became more common, as a visible break from the traditional black-leaded range. In the 1930s, other colors, such as mottled blue and green, were also popular. Aside from its appearance, the great advantage of the enameled surface was that it was easily cleaned. By 1930, the typical gas or electric cooker stood on four short legs and consisted of an oven, surmounted by a grill compartment, and a cooktop with between two and four boiling rings.

Sheet steel, which was light and more flexible, was available in the 1920s, but was too expensive to be used extensively. The pioneer of the sheet steel cooker was the American designer Norman Bel Geddes, who produced the Oriole cooker design for the Standard Gas Corporation in 1932. Sheet steel was a logical choice for Bel Geddes who, as an advocate of streamlining, sought materials that could provide a seamless profile. The construction process entailed the clipping of bendable sheets to a steel chassis rather than the bolting of rigid plates to a cast-iron frame. The Oriole cooker in white porcelain-enameled steel was notable for its rounded edges, flush front with plinth, and folding splashboard cum tabletop. The plinth served the dual purpose of inhibiting the accumulation of dust and food debris under the cooker and providing storage space. The full-line cooker with a warming drawer below the oven became standard by the 1940s. In Britain, the first white steel gas cooker was the Parkinson Renown, designed for the 1935 George V Jubilee House and produced commercially from 1937. The use of sheet steel encouraged the standardization of core components, which could then be assembled in different combinations, and this standardization lowered production costs.

Competition between Gas and Electricity

By 1920, solid fuel ranges were out of general favor, except in rural areas where gas and electricity supplies were absent. They remained so thereafter, although the Aga stove, invented by the Swedish physicist Gustav Dalen in 1924 and marketed commercially from 1929, has sustained a small but devoted customer base. In Britain, the growing importance of gas as a cooking and heating fuel was confirmed by the 1920 Gas Regulation Act, which changed the basis for gas prices from illuminating value to calorific value. The situation was much the same in the United States, where consumption of gas for lighting fell from 75 percent in 1899 to 21 percent in 1919, when consumption as domestic fuel reached 54 percent. World War I had provided an opportunity to demonstrate the convenience of electric cookers, which were adopted for field canteens. In the intensifying competition between gas and electricity, the gas cooker manufacturers had the upper hand, in terms of both price and performance. In 1915, the American Stove Company of Cleveland, Ohio, had introduced the first thermostat for gas ovens, the Lorrain oven regulator. The British equivalent, the Regulo thermostat, was developed by Radiation Ltd. (John Wright & Company) in 1923 and fitted to the Davis Company’s New World gas cooker, which also featured a slag wool lagging for better insulation and a base flue. Previously, oven controls, like boiling ring controls, had settings that simply expressed the rate of gas flow, with no reference to the temperature produced. Similarly, electric cookers were fitted with mercury current regulators, and this remained so until the early 1930s. A thermometer attached to the oven door showed the effect of the regulator setting. In Britain, the first automatic temperature controller for electric ovens was the Credastat regulator, introduced in 1931.

Gas boiling rings were also much more efficient than electric ones because the electric elements were slow to heat up, compared to the instant heat of gas. The flat electric plates only provided good heat transmission to pans with similarly flat bottoms that maximized surface contact. Electric boiling rings began to improve in the mid-1920s, when enamel-coated, metal-sheathed elements appeared. This design of boiling ring meant that the pan was in close contact with the heating source without an intervening plate. In the early 1930s, the U.S. company General Electric developed a new type of faster-heating radiant ring, the Calrod strip element, which consisted of resistance coils set in magnesium oxide and sheathed with chromium iron. Combined with bimetallic controls, akin to the automatic oven regulators, the new boiling rings were much more comparable in performance with gas burners.

One of the few inherent advantages of electric cookers at this time was variety of size. Plumbing in a gas outlet was more space-consuming and obtrusive than the electrical equivalent, so gas cookers were invariably full-size cookers. People living alone or families in houses or apartments with small kitchens constituted a ready market for smaller cookers. The British company Belling made particular efforts to exploit this market. In 1919, it introduced the Modernette cooker, a compact, lightweight floor-standing cooker, and in 1929 it launched the Baby Belling, a tabletop cooker.

In Britain, the price differential between gas and electric cookers was largely a result of the non-standardization of electricity supply. This meant that manufacturers needed to produce electric cookers specified to meet the range of voltages in use. The construction of the national grid from 1926 eventually removed this disadvantage. Moreover, in 1930, a group of British electric cooker manufacturers agreed to a common standard that reduced the number of options, thus consolidating production. The electricity utilities introduced cheap rental schemes to overcome the purchase disincentives. An indication of the success of these schemes is that rental of electric cookers was more common than buying until 1938. In the United States, with its standardized electricity supply, electric cookers were much cheaper, but the combined advantages of gas cookers gave them a dominant market position in both Britain and the United States. In Britain, about 75 percent of homes had gas cookers in 1939, compared with about 8 percent of homes that had electric cookers. However, as electric cookers accounted for about a quarter of total cooker production, the balance was shifting in favor of electric cookers. In the United States, gas was less dominant because the larger and more dispersed rural population created a continuing demand for solid fuel and oil stoves. By 1930, gas cookers were the most popular type and were found in 48 percent of homes, while electric cookers were found in just 6 percent of homes.

Early Electric Cookers

The first electric oven was installed in the Hotel Bernina, near St. Moritz in Switzerland, in 1889. Electricity was supplied by a hydroelectric power generator.

In Britain and the United States, electric cookers began to feature in public demonstrations and model electrical kitchen displays at major exhibitions in the early 1890s, including the 1891 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London and the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The companies that pioneered the commercial production of electric cookers included Crompton & Company in Britain and the Carpenter Company in the United States. The heating elements in these early electric cookers took the form of resistor wires embedded in enameled panels. This heating technology was improved in 1893 by the English electrical engineer H. J. Dowsing, who sandwiched the steel heating wires between two panels, creating a safer and more practical design. Crompton & Company began to manufacture and market cookers to Dowsing’s design in 1894. The heating panels were at first placed on the oven sides and later at the top and bottom. The performance of electric cookers benefited from the improvement in heating technology created by the invention of Nichrome (or nickel and chrome) wire by the American Albert L. Marsh in 1905. The boiling plates on the cooktop took the form of radiant coils on fireclay supports, topped by perforated or solid metal plates.

The main problem for electric cooker manufacturers was that there were few electrified homes to sell their products to. Moreover, even fewer homes had a power circuit as well as a lighting circuit. Electric cookers were, and still are, the electric appliances with the highest power rating and, as such, require a dedicated power supply and fuse box. The investment in wiring an electric cooker and the high costs of the heavy electricity consumption were a major disincentive at a time when electric cookers had nothing extra to offer in terms of functionality. Up until World War I, both gas and electric cookers were modeled on the rival solid fuel range. This meant box-shaped ovens with safe-like doors, made of cast iron with a black lead finish. Given the persistence of fears about the safety of gas and electricity, gas and electric cooker manufacturers may have felt that a familiar design would provide a sense of reassurance. Not surprisingly, with such limited sales potential for full-size cookers, manufacturers concentrated their marketing efforts on small, tabletop cooking appliances, such as electric frying pans and chafing dishes. These appliances had the advantage that they could be used in the dining room as well as the kitchen and had no nonelectric rivals.

Early Gas Cookers

In the late eighteenth century, the Reverend John Clayton provided the first account of cooking with gas when he described how eggs and beef had been boiled at a natural gas spring near Wigan, in northwest England. The first person to attempt gas cooking inside he home was the German gas pioneer Frederick Albert Winsor, who began experimenting at his home in Braunschweig in 1802. However, in the early decades of town gas production, gas was mainly piped to factories, public buildings, and street-lighting installations. In Britain, the first gas cookers were intended for commercial catering use. They bore little resemblance to modern gas cookers, consisting merely of an oven with burners at the bottom and a meat jack suspended from the top. Gas cookers were displayed at the Great Exhibition, held in London in 1851, by which time household gas provision was becoming more widespread. By 1869, gas cookers had evolved into a form closer to the modern gas cooker, with internal shelves and top burners, and were available for hire in Britain. During the late nineteenth century, gas became a relatively cheap fuel in Britain as the industry was by then largely municipally owned, whereas in the United States gas was a more expensive alternative to solid fuel. Therefore, in Britain, gas cookers became slowly but steadily more popular and, by 1900, were found in 2 million homes.

The Evolution of the Kitchen Range

For centuries, cooking arrangements in Europe were based on the system developed by the Romans and diffused throughout Europe in the wake of the military conquests. At its simplest, this involved a raised brick hearth to hold an open fire, set within a wide chimney base. As smoke and hot air rose, they were drawn up the chimney. Different methods of cooking could be achieved by adding devices such as spits, supports for pots and pans, and brick-oven compartments. Cooking on an open fire was slow and inefficient because a lot of heat was absorbed by the chimney walls and by the air in the room. In the mid-eighteenth century, the American statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin invented a ventilated cast-iron wood-burning stove, through which the hot combustion gases circulated before escaping.

This idea for concentrating the heat source and retaining heat was developed further by Benjamin Thompson, Count von Rumford, in the 1790s. Rumford was born in the United States, in Massachusetts, but his early career as a spy for the British led to his forced departure to Europe. During his employment by the elector of Bavaria in various senior ministerial roles, he developed the solid-fuel range for use in a variety of large-scale catering contexts, including workhouses, army canteens, and hospitals. Perhaps the most innovative feature of Rumford’s ranges was the sunken chambers for pans in the range top. The pans were heated by the combustion gases rising up the surrounding flues. Although Rumford produced scaled-down versions of his basic range design, it was another American inventor, Philo Penfield Stewart, who developed the prototype of the nineteenth-century household range. Stewart patented his first range design in 1834 and later moved from Ohio to Troy, New York, where he established himself as a manufacturer.

Cookers

The character of cooking in the home underwent a dramatic transformation during the twentieth century, partly as a result of technological developments, but also as a result of social changes. In 1900, most households had coal-fired ranges with solid hotplates above small ovens and consumed relatively little preprocessed food. On the whole, processed foods were valued more for their longer shelf lives than for time savings in preparation and cooking. A hundred years later, most households had freestanding or built-in gas or electric cookers (stoves in American parlance) and consumed a wide range of processed foods.