The story of Lanco Coolskin® oven gloves

The story of Coolskin oven gloves begins in 1997 when John Cooper burnt his hand whilst taking a casserole dish out of his mother's oven. Whilst nursing the burn, John started to ponder how little protection these regular oven gloves provided.

John, a welding engineer by profession, was aware of new developments in heat-resistant fabrics which were being introduced at that time in welding and other industrial applications. New fabrics based on Nomex and Kevlar fibres were becoming available which had superb thermal protection properties. John’s simple idea was to apply these advanced fabrics to a more everyday item – oven gloves.

Most oven gloves of the time were (and still are) simple cotton-based designs with foam inners, which offered very little heat protection. Seeing an opportunity to produce something much better, John worked with specialist fabric manufacturers to produce a range of oven-gloves that were simple and easy to use, yet provided dramatically improved heat insulation.

John named his new oven glove range Coolskin. The concept was to bring industrial-strength thermal protection to the domestic kitchen. The secret to the Coolskin gloves' advanced heat protection was their special construction and the use of the new Kevlar and Nomex fibres. Whereas conventional oven gloves will protect to about about 180°C John’s new Coolskin gloves offered heat protection up to 350°C, allowing hot kitchen items to be held firmly and securely for 16 seconds.

John setup a new company called Lanco and began selling the Coolskin gloves to a number of high street retailers and wholesalers as well as by direct mail-order and via the Internet. Word of these remarkable "Lanco Coolskin" gloves spread, and he sold about 3/4m pairs over the next 10 years. John also went on to add new styles to the Coolskin range, with extra wrist and forearm protection, and the Coolskin 375 Extra which offered protection against steam and grease up to 500°C .

In 2010 ill-health forced John to scale-back his involvement with Coolskin. However in early 2011, following a personal introduction, John accepted a proposal from The Oven Glove Company to join on a part-time basis as Head of Product Development.

As part of the move to the new company, the Coolskin range was re-branded as Glove Buddies, but the essence of John’s Coolskin idea remained – using modern industrial fabrics to provide excellent heat protection in the domestic kitchen. Although the name has changed, the new gloves are essentially identical to the old Coolskin range, using the same fabrics and manufacturing process. Richard Sidlin, technical director of The Oven Glove Company puts it this way: “we wanted to make sure that we kept to exactly the same specification that John developed – and that customers expect”.

The new Glove Buddies range continues the Coolskin tradition, and is available online and from a growing range of retailers.

DuPointTM, Nomex®and Kevlar® are trademarks or registered trademarks of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. Coolskin® is a trademark of Regent Croft.