Thanks, everyone - and I appreciate the early birthday wishes! Glad to have made it through (almost) another year of life (knock wood, jinx-jinx)!!
My greatest resources are the wonderful friends I'm so fortunate to share my life with! Beyond being loyal, loving and supportive, they generous and thoughtful. We are all collectors of one thing or another (a great thing to have in common and we understand and appreciate one another's passions and interests) so whenever one of us sees something we know the other would love to have, we go for it!
I will post some more pictures of the Electrochef. We moved it into the garage yesterday as rain is in the forecast. When I get a chance, I'll take some more detailed photos and share them.
The Electrochef was made by the Electomaster Corportation, which was located in Detroit and then moved to Mt. Clemens, Mich., about 20 miles northeast of Detroit. Electomaster made many conventionally designed electric stoves, but the Electrochef was a very unique model for them, and from what I can see they made this model for 10 years or so, from the late 20's to the late 30's. The four burners were originally an open-coil on ceramic design, and I've seen some that still have the original burners. Many of them were converted in the 40's and 50's to Calrod or Radiantube style burners (as in the case of mine). Likewise, the original oven controls were notoriously bad and impossible to calibrate, making the ovens unreliable. Many owners switched to Robetshaw or other oven controls and thermostats (on mine, you will see a little box over the oven - this contains the new oven controls, although they left the original on the control panel).
The internal framework of the range is interesting, as it was designed so that you could put the oven either on the left or the right, which is why sometimes you will see variations on the oven location. There was even a deluxe model (very rare) that had two ovens with the cooktop in the center. This stove was also available for a few years in a beautiful seafoam green enamel (see picture below)
The wonderful styling of this range is what always attracted me, but beyond that I wanted one because it was a product of my native Detroit, which before the auto industry took hold was one of the stove-making capitals of the world.
