THIS OBJECT IS PART OF THE PROJECT 'A HISTORY OF CORNWALL IN 100 OBJECTS'.
MARAZION MUSEUM. Brass cauldrons and cooking pots were valuable and important domestic items and were traded over large distances. Such items were high status, as well as practical objects. It is exactly the sort of object that a rich Marazion merchant would have owned.
This example is rare and late in date. It comes, like so many others in Cornwall, from the Fathers Foundry near Taunton in Somerset. This foundry produced skillets, cauldrons, mortars and one bell. The mark IF with an arrow was introduced when John Fathers changed to sand-casting from loam casting. There are only three other cauldrons of this type known at Montacute, Hampton Court and Wimborne Minster in Dorset. There is also a mortar in Ludlow Museum with the same mark dated 1692. At least one Somerset-made skillet with the motto handle 'CVB Loyall to his Majestie' is in the Isles of Scilly Museum and others are in the Royal Cornwall Museum collections.