FIG. 25.—SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY BRASS PAN.
FIG. 26.—BRASS TRIPOD POT.
FIG. 27.—CALDRON OF CAST BRASS.
FIG. 28.—BRASS COOKING VESSEL WITH CURVED HANDLE.
Reference has been made to the baronial halls, and to the numerous relics which have been lost to futurity. There are, however, some well-known castles where, although the kitchens have been replenished from time to time, the older forms of cooking vessels have been perpetuated. Until recent days the kitchen arrangements at Windsor Castle remained much as they had been for many years previous, and even now copper and brass retain a favoured position and are very much in evidence. Windsor has been the scene of much feasting, and many great State events have put a strain even upon the domestic resources of that famous Royal residence.
The great kitchen of the castle is supplemented by a vegetable kitchen, a green kitchen, and a scullery, and around these rooms there is a bright array of copper pans and cooking utensils, mostly bearing the monogram of George IV, for it was in his reign that many new culinary appointments were added. These vessels, large and small, were in constant use during the reign of Queen Victoria. Her late Majesty was averse to change. In her days oak out of Windsor Forest was burned in the grate, and the spits and roasting-jacks and other kitchen accessories were in keeping with the copper and brass pans and kettles. Great changes have been made since the accession of George V, for Queen Mary supervises the management of the Royal kitchens, and many modern cooking vessels have been substituted for older ones.
The collector of copper and brass culinary utensils has seldom an opportunity of adding the large bronze caldrons and relics of Royal kitchens to his collection. He has to be content with exploring lesser domains, and securing wherever possible the smaller cooking vessels of days gone by. These are frequently quite as interesting as those of larger size, and there is a wealth of copper still lying dormant in antique shops, and in some instances in the scrap-heaps of the old metal dealer. Without going any further back the saucepans of the seventeenth century well reward the discoverer of such relics. That century was a time when pious mottoes were carved upon the lintel beam and when old coffers and other pieces of massive oak were decorated with such sentiments. The brassfounders followed suit and ornamented pots and pans, and enriched them with mottoes just as they cast such inscriptions on bells and mortars. Two very interesting seventeenth-century vessels are illustrated on p. 165. One of these, Fig. 25, was discovered some years ago in Fetter Lane, and is now in the Guildhall Museum. The other, Fig. 26, is a tripod pot, the handle of which has a loop near the bowl. It is probably of early seventeenth or late sixteenth-century workmanship. The brass skillet of seventeenth-century make, illustrated in Fig. 29, may be seen by the curious in the British Museum. There is no uncertainty about its date, for it is marked 1684, and along the handle is the quaint motto "Pitty the Pore." Collectors may be reminded that inscriptions are sometimes stamped; at others engraved, and they are frequently met with on quite unimportant vessels. The metal used for such utensils was chiefly of brass, but often of latten, an alloy in which there was an admixture of zinc, or of tin in what was known as white latten. As it has been stated already, brass came into vogue late in the sixteenth century, and soon became popular for kitchen utensils; latten, however, was a favourite alloy for spoons and the smaller objects, especially for porringers for mulling wine. Concurrent with the use of copper and its modern alloys bronze appears to have been used in this country even as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century, the cooking vessels illustrated in Figs. 30 and 31 being bronze of this late type.