12/22/2020
Borough Furnace is an artisanal, hand cast iron cookware company in Owego.
Husband and wife duo John Truex and Liz Seru have created a Finger Lakes business that’s gotten the attention of many throughout the country.
Since 2011, Borough Furnace has been designing and manufacturing beautiful cast iron cookware ranging from Cast Iron Skillets (which the late famed chef Anthony Bourdain praised on in his inaugural episode of Raw Craft) to Enameled Dutch Ovens, their most recent offering and the only dutch oven of its kind actually made in the United States.
Truex and Seru’s relationship as husband and wife is a great benefit for their work together at Borough Furnace. In developing new products, they’re able to take home their hand-cast products and test and cook with the prototypes themselves in their family kitchen, giving them the opportunity to tweak the products’ design and function, as they see fit, before landing on a final, perfected product to hit the market.
Interested home cooks with backgrounds in industrial design and a shared belief that objects you use in your daily life should bring you pleasure to see and touch everyday led John Truex and Liz Seru to found Borough Furnace in 2011 – initially through a Kickstarter campaign. Since then, Borough Furnace has expanded to a 20,000 square foot factory in Owego, where they continue their commitment to environmental sustainability – as the workshop runs on wind offsets – and beautifully designed cast iron cookware.
“We started in 2011 with a collection of two skillets, borrowing the best aspects of the classic American design, but crafted with contemporary updates,” states John and Liz. “We’ve since expanded our initial offerings to include oven-to-table bakeware and a Dutch oven, which has the distinction of being the only enameled cast iron made in the United States.
“Our inspiration stems from the deep connection between design, craft and production. Because we are able to machine our own tooling and we make our own castings in house, we prototype our products endlessly – taking them home, cooking with them and making refinements until the details are just perfect.”
For more information, visit boroughfurnace.com.
