I have my grandmother’s cast iron cookware. They made the cast iron stuff better back then. When you find cast iron in a store nowdays, it is heavy and crudely cast. My cast iron pieces are formed very thin and very very smooth. The crap I see in stores nowdays would be impossible to lift a soft fried egg off it without damaging it or spilling the runny parts.
What I would really really like to have is some solid copper kettles.
Oh, I'm glad it's not just me. I picked up a small frying pan in a store and it weighed a TON. I could barely heft it. I thought "This is a weapon!"
You might enjoy the books by Eric Sloane, like A Reverence for Wood. Sloane was an artist who explored the past in some very charming books. I enjoy his writing as well. An Early American Boy is one of my favorites. He made a very apt point in his books when he discussed the sense of “awareness” people in an earlier time had. They were, he said, more cognizant of their surroundings, their world, than we are today. Modern man is endlessly distracted, whereas distractions, long ago, could be deadly. Sloane also was fascinated with the construction of tools and things made out of wood and wrote about it. Dover Publications carries them and you can find several on their website. Happy New Year!