Cheryl, this is very interesting. I've been going through the catalogues posted in the stickies. The whole thing is quite confusing. I've never seen a piece that looks like the image of the sauce pan. The lid I have clearly goes with the 3 and 4 sauce pan though. The measured diameter for these are identical and matches the diameter of my lid. I guess I'm going to have to be on a lookout for one of these saucepans—I expect that might take a while!
As for the 2 qt pan itself, it's very confusing. The images with the helper tab aren't convincing to me; I don't think a helper tab on the image means that all the various sizes have this feature, much like some skillets have helper tabs and others do not but both aren't shown in the catalogue. I've never seen a 2 qt stew pan with either a helper tab or a pour spout. The 2 qt stew pot mentioned in the '54 Century catalogue claims an 8" diameter for the pan, and that's much larger than the pan I have, by over an inch. Also, the claimed wight with a lid is 6 lbs for the 2 qt stew pot, and mine is less than 5 lbs with the lid. This discrepancy is much larger than for my skillet, which only misses the claimed weight by about an ounce.
Also, although none of the Red Mountain catalogues show a 2 qt stew pot in them, the '39–'41 ASW price list with the 3839 catalogue DOES list a 2 qt stew pot with a cover at a price of $1.02. This price is different than for the 2 qt sauce pan ($1.32), so its not a misprint, I think. This is clearly Red Mountain. Given that BSR used the same lid for multiple pans, it may be that this stew pot actually does go with this lid.
Actually, I am not even convinced that the stew pot IS BSR. Didn't Lodge make a sauce pan that looks nearly identical?
At this point my guess is that it is BSR, that it is early Red Mountain, and is the pan mentioned in the '41 ASW price list catalogue. BSR typically didn't redesign their pans often; with the exception of a few size changes that you've noted before their skillets were essentially the same with different style fonts for most of their existence. I doubt they had a 2 qt stew pot that had a helper handled and pour spout then eliminated those features for the Century series in the 2 qt. pan but kept them in the 3 qt pan. . As I said, I think that this pan was the 2 qt stew pot mentioned in the '41 price list and that later the 2 qt was added to the catalogue itself, but had an error in the printing on the diameter of the pot—it's worth noting that only the '54 Century catalogue mentions the diameter; subsequent catalogues only give the weight. Nevertheless, it is not very clear!
Are there other price lists available for other Red Mountain era catalogues, or is the one posted in the sticky the only one known? Also, are there any known examples of the "sauce pans" from the Red Mountain catalogues? I'd like to see one to have a better idea for what I should be searching.
