The French enamel cookware company Le Creuset only made 300 of its constellation braisers, and Lia Imhoff has one – No 25, to be precise.
It’s a rare and coveted pot from the beloved company, which released a cosmos-themed line in 2019. The lid of the heavy blue-black pot gleams with stars and was a birthday gift from her husband, a Nasa scientist. Despite being almost irreplaceable, the braiser gets a workout in her kitchen, especially on patriotic holidays.
She doesn’t coddle her pieces – all 112 of them. “In the end, these are tools, and every one of them has to pull its weight,” she said from her home in Virginia.
Welcome to the global world of Le Creuset supercollectors. These enthusiasts have invested huge amounts of time and money to acquire vessels hand-crafted by Le Creuset. They hunt for everything from mini cocottes to large Dutch ovens online, at discount shops and outlets, and the company’s hotly anticipated annual factory-to-table sale. It can be a consuming, expensive and deeply personal hobby. To the obsessed, there’s always another piece calling their name. Each recipe requires a particular vessel, each season a suitable hue, and each dinner party a special display detail.
Valeria Rodriguez home in Germantown, Maryland, is adorned with more than 100 pieces of glossy Le Creuset cookware, each a work of art in a collection worth $38,000. Rodriguez once happened to catch a truly unprecedented deal – and would later learn it was a pricing error – on the Le Creuset website. Taking advantage of the glitch, she scored 14 of the same cast-iron braiser because they were listed for a mere $8 each. Select vessels will stay pristine, displayed on her shelves forever. Others will be lovingly chosen to do what they were designed for: braising meats, baking breads and slow-cooking stews.
When Rodriguez started her Le Creuset collection in 2020, it coincided with a complete life transformation during the pandemic: elective bariatric surgery for weight loss. “My Le Creuset journey has taught me the soul-rewarding practice of cooking nutritious food and how elevated cookware makes me want to cook in this way often,” she said.
Each collector has a different reason for acquiring more and more pieces through the years, and some of those reasons run deep.
When 60-year-old Imhoff immigrated to the United States from Greece at the age of five, her family didn’t bring much with them. For Imhoff, collecting Le Creuset is about overcoming adversity and feeling safe in her new home.
“We had very little at the beginning, and I was taught to appreciate what we had and care for my things so I would not have to replace them. To me, Le Creuset represents a triumph of quality, durability and beauty, and the fact that I was able to acquire it at all is an affirmation of success. Its mere presence in my home is a form of security for me.”
Other collectors’ reasons may only be surface-deep. The sheer beauty of these vessels – which have come in almost 90 colors in the US and many more abroad – keeps them coming back for more.
“I enjoy walking over to my display shelves to choose the pot for dinner that night,” said Linda Claudia Togaoka, who lives in Yokohama, Japan, and owns an estimated 250 cast iron Le Creuset pieces. “On TV, I think we have all seen the scenes where a woman enters her huge walk-in closet and she has that thrilling moment of deciding what to wear. For me, it is a thrill to decide which pot to use.”
Karyn Wilson, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, believes she has the largest collection of one particular color in the world. “I learned that the cool mint color was an outlet exclusive at the time, and I decided then and there to stick with it for the rest of my life,” she said. “I like things to be matchy-matchy.” In fact, most of her other kitchen items – besides her 33 cast iron and 135 stoneware Le Creuset pieces – are in the pastel green family too, including a Vitamix and SodaStream.
Seasonality plays a role for some collectors, like Maricel Borbon Doulette of North Port, Florida, who has many vessels of the same size and shape in varying colors that only come out of storage at certain times of the year. She uses her indigo blue and Marseille blue pieces in the summer; flame, honey, and Sonoma green in the fall; cerise red in winter; and whites with floral designs for spring.
“A few people call me ‘Risotto Queen’, not because I make risottos, but because I have 16 risotto pots,” she said.
Whatever the reason for collecting, this hobby isn’t exactly akin to collecting small stamps or coins. Each pot and pan is quite heavy (a 3.5-quart braiser weighs almost 13lbs) and takes up a surprising amount of storage space, forcing collectors to find unique solutions for accessing and displaying their wares.
To ensure access to her 100-plus cast iron pieces, Rodriguez converted her second bedroom into a pantry by assembling seven bookcases for storage.
Wilson, the cool mint collector, is currently renovating her kitchen, and having more cabinets dedicated to Le Creuset was something she and her husband kept in mind when creating the design.
Le Creuset collectors tend to skew more female, but that’s not to say that they aren’t supported by the men in their lives. Not only does Togaoka treasure the memories of her husband’s unwavering help hunting down her most prized possession, the rare black Momiji pot featuring Japanese maple leaves, he also helps his wife set up regular photoshoot field trips, where they find eye-catching ways to display their sakura pieces (the brand’s Japanese cherry blossom design) using nearby cherry blossom trees as a beautiful backdrop.
For some collectors, it’s a lifelong conquest to keep purchasing more and more pieces. For others, their shopping may come to an end whenever they’ve completed their sets. And while these collections are invaluable to their owners, it’s not necessarily a love that will outlive them.
The future of Arlene Robillard’s collection of cookware in flame, Le Creuset’s signature orange color, is unclear. The Apopka, Florida, resident owns every single size of round and oval French ovens ever produced, alongside 100 other pieces she’s collected from countries near and far: a beehive tea kettle, a rare vessel for cassoulet, a paella pan, a rainbow of bell pepper-shaped cookware. Her collecting crusade has spanned more than a decade of her life.
“My kids don’t want them, which makes me sad, but the journey was so much fun,” she said. “I don’t know that I would or could do it again, but I’m so glad I did.”
Lisa Graves, a collector in Houston, Texas, has a plan in place – at least for one item in her 100-plus piece collection. She has a particular affinity for her second Le Creuset purchase, a 3.5-quart chilli red braiser, which has been a workhorse in her kitchen since she landed a great deal at Marshall’s in 2010.
“I look forward to the day when I can pass down my items to a family member,” she said. “But not my braiser … I want to be buried with it.”