Cookware

The pans you will still be using in twenty years

Cookware is the one category where the whole argument for buying properly is settled before it starts. A pan is used several times a week, subjected to heat and metal utensils and the occasional catastrophe, and washed more often than anything else you own. Buy the cheap one and you will buy it again in three years, and again after that, which is a strange way to save money.

What is here comes from independent makers rather than the enormous houseware groups, which means smaller batches, and materials chosen for how they behave rather than how cheaply they can be pressed. Cast iron that takes a decade to come good and then stays good. Enamel that chips honourably rather than peeling. Stoneware you can take from oven to table without transferring anything, and wooden boards and spoons from workshops that know which timber tolerates being wet.

Some of it is genuinely heirloom, in the sense that somebody will inherit it and be pleased. Most of it is simply made by people who cook, which turns out to be the useful qualification. Handles that balance. Lids that fit. Pouring lips that pour. Small things, and the difference between a pan you reach for and one that lives at the back of the cupboard.

Set the table to match with our dining and tableware, or stay closer to home with our British makers. Do have a browse.