Pot (Cauldron)

Description

This cast iron cooking pot (also called a caldron or cauldron) has a bulging, compressed globular shape body with cornered lugs all supported by three pentagonal-shaped splayed legs. All the components were cast at one time and the tapered, pointed center of the bowl has a sprue on the underside. The wrought iron bail handle is possibly not original and there is a large section of the upper wall on the pot that has cracked and broken away. When it was acquired, the seller stated this pot was discovered during plowing activity in a field in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Remarkably, if this vessel was created at one of the Saugus Ironworks sites, it is one of two known hollowware examples attributed to the colonial iron furnace. Confident attribution is still debated, but scientific analysis reveals it was created from bog iron with a process used during the colonial era.