Wagner Ware Sidney -O- No. 6 Cast Iron Skillet

The Wagner Ware Sidney -O- No. 6 is one of the two most commonly produced sizes in the standard skillet line — and in a complete set, that commonness is the point. The No. 6 was the size that fit the standard domestic stove eye, the size a cook reached for a single serving or a small family portion, the size produced continuously across the full span of the collector era. This example, catalog number 1056 D, is the heat-ring version — cast in the decade between the adoption of the catalog numbering system in 1924 and the smooth-bottom transition of approximately 1935. It is the No. 6 from the wood-stove era, before the flat-topped gas range made the heat ring obsolete, and it documents the daily domestic cooking life of a generation of American households as faithfully as any rarer piece in the collection.