Most people who pay attention to such things consider the Antique Hoosier cabinet to be the precursor to the Kitchen Maid cabinets that are still somewhat familiar today. Some of the requirements for kitchen cabinetry remain familiar to us to day. These might include storage for glasses, plates and other utensils. 

Kitchen Maid cabinets

It would be rare to nowadays to find a bin set aside for 50 pounds of flour. Kitchen Maid cabinet got their official start way back in 1912. That means that either the cabinet or the company was born in 1912. Initially the company was called Wasmuth-Endicott Indiana and its products included Kitchen Maid cabinets. Almost every aspect of our lives has been altered since then. It's no surprise that the kitchen has been transformed as well. The original Kitchen Maid cabinets were made almost entirely of wood.

By 1919 "new improved" models were sporting easy clean porcelain tops. In the catalog published by the Wasmuth-Endicott company in 1924 now had a "standardized" Kitchen Maid unit system available. An eighteenth century mentality based in tradition had given way to a twentieth century one. In 1949, near the onset of the Jet Age, streamlined designs were all the rage. A catalog by the company from that time describes its products as functional and modern. Any typical catalog or advertisement from that era cited improvements, discoveries with brand new (made up?) names that sounded official or scientific. The Kitchen Maid Company lured potential customers into its kitchens with Composite Construction and Flo-Line Styling. Customers were informed that their cabinetry was made up of grainless Presdwood and included Resinite Doors. Composite Construction actually pointed to an important departure from older manufacturing methods.

Space Age aluminum was now joined with "selected hardwoods" to produce cabinetry the like of which had never been seen before. Aluminum was cheap, plentiful and no longer associated with the weapons of war or aircraft of any kind. "Aluminum Production at New Peacetime High", as found on the front page of the January 16 Hartford Courant, attests to that fact. Were Divided Cutlery Drawer Inserts made of hardwood replete with plastic liners really a startlingly new concept back in 1949? Suffice it to say that plastic, like aluminum was finding its way into all kinds of products for the first time, including cabinetry. The Kitchen Maid Corp. of Andrews Indiana was still in the business of making kitchen cabinetry.

Some of the notions that had been at the company's founding were long gone; others persisted in strange new ways. The company still felt a need to store sugar and flour in its cabinetry. So it built Special Metal Drawer Inserts right into the drawers themselves with sealed off sections and sliding lids. Fins on cars grew to enormous sizes in 1959. Kitchen cabinets on the other hand began to get folded away by cabinetry makers. This may help explain the preference that collectors and cabinet restorers have for older examples. Older versions of the Kitchen Maid cabinet may require newer hardware. Fitting it on can prove to be a difficult endeavor. The doors seem too thin for the fittings or nails. It's not entirely surprising that certain bits of cabinet making lore got lost as the company sought to improve upon its earlier models.