More on Hammersmith
I have two pieces of
Hammersmith too, and it's truly lovely stuff with a real hand-made robustness to it that I don't see in the usual French suspects (of which I have a good number too). If the maker gets the thickness right (2 - 2.5mm), then my feeling is that if it's copper and tin, it's all good.
I have
Cookwise and I frankly don't know what Shirley is talking about. I saute greens in a tinned pan all the time and they're never anything but beautifully green when done. I also love brussel sprout hash, and whereas it goes a little off in stainless, in tin its color comes through perfectly and the browning is much more even. Julia says in her intro to
Mastering that nothing beats tin-lined copper, and I'm with Julia.
Like Robo I waited at least 2 months for Hammersmith, which is a long time, but I exchanged several emails with "Mack" (I think the owner) over that time and he was great - friendly, reassuring and informative. He said at one point that he doesn't like how long it takes them to make a pot any more than I did, but they got some attention in the press and that caused a big backlog. Maybe it's gotten better by now.
(BTW, I used brooklyncoppercookware.com, which looks to be the same site as hammersmithcookware.com)
So, the service is great, but mostly what needed servicing was my wondering when I would get my pots! (I've gotten other things online from
buycoppercookware.com and I've never waited more than 2 weeks with the slowest shipping) For what you end up with after the long wait, however, Hammersmith prices are very fair, and the craftmanship is superb.
On that point, I also have two
Lara from Tasmania and have to say I was disappointed there. The walls were nowhere near 2.5mm as advertised and the handles are stamped steel and very uncomfortable (the website says "forged" - they're definitely not). Also, one of my saucepans arrived with loose rivets on both the pot and lid and when I asked what they suggested (short of sending them back, having already taken about 2 months shipped in a beer case from Australia) the whole response was "Find an anvil and pound the rivets until they're tight." As pots they're relatively inexpensive, but I definitely got what I paid for. Granted this was a few years ago, so maybe things have changed there too.
Oh, one last point about Hammersmith. They like to say their stuff is "organic" and, well, it is because, as they say on the website, it's just copper, tin and iron. That's great as far as it goes, but they may be taking it to an extreme with their iron handles. I never realized that there's a coating on all my French pot handles until my Hammersmith started to rust (which happened very quickly - in fact one of my pans arrived with the first few flecks of red already on the lid handle). It's solvable with a little veg oil (like seasoning a cast iron pan), but be forewarned - whatever keeps my Mauviel from rusting after 5 years is not part of the Hammersmith philosophy. You're on your own.