Ferro Foundry · Columbus, Ohio · 1948–2026
The last run.
Seventy-eight years of cast iron come down to fourteen skillets on a shelf on Crosby Street. When they go, the No. 08 retires from the catalog.
Ferro Foundry · Columbus, Ohio · 1948–2026
Seventy-eight years of cast iron come down to fourteen skillets on a shelf on Crosby Street. When they go, the No. 08 retires from the catalog.
Ferro Foundry has cast our skillet since the first catalog — poured in Columbus, machined smooth the old way, seasoned before it ships. It is the pan our whole idea of a kitchen was built around, and it has outsold everything but the axe.
This year the foundry's patternmaker retires, and the foundry retires with him. We were offered the pattern, and other foundries could have poured it — the numbers would have worked. But the No. 08 was never a shape. It was a shop: the sand mix nobody wrote down, the machining pass done by feel, the seasoning schedule kept in one man's head.
So the skillet retires whole. The last run came off the floor in June — fourteen units, each one numbered — and they sell until they don't. Then the catalog gets one line shorter, and stays that way.
i.
Numbered, and sold from the outfitting room only. A skillet like this should be lifted once before it is owned.
ii.
Retirement doesn't touch the guarantee. Re-seasoning and repair stay free for every No. 08 ever sold, for the life of the pan.
iii.
The mold goes to the back wall at Crosby Street, beside the first axe off the Granite Hollow anvil. Retired, not lost.
“A skillet is the only thing we ever made that gets better after we stop making it.”A. Ferro, Patternmaker, 1961–2026