Friday Show and Tell - Brass Coal Scuttle

One of our weekend activities was a visit to the Lancaster Marketplace, a large indoor and outdoor flea market in Lancaster, Massachusetts. As we were each ambling along the aisles on Sunday afternoon, my niece spotted something that interested her. It was a brass coal scuttle.*

My youngest sister immediately saw it as a possible container for the dried hydrangeas she had bought for my mother. The piece was marked $18.00. However, as we discussed the patina and how much cleaning it might need to look presentable, the booth owner dropped the price to $12.00. So my sister bought it and we brought it back to Oak Rise Cottage.

I don’t think this piece is old at all. It seems to be a decorative piece of recent vintage.

It is of brass and really needs a good cleaning. Note the blue and white ceramic handle.



The sides have brass fittings below the handle. The feet are also shaped brass.

The hydrangeas are very brittle, so I have to plan the arrangement before working with the fragile stems.

Here it is temporarily sited in front of the fireplace till when I can work on it.

To see more interesting personal treasures, visit Kelli for a list of participating posts.

* "A coal scuttle, sometimes spelled coalscuttle and also called a hod, is a bucket-like container for holding a small, intermediate supply of coal convenient to an indoor coal-fired stove or heater. It is usually made of metal and shaped like a vertical cylinder or truncated cone, with the open top slanted for pouring coal on a fire. It may have one or two handles. Homes that don't use coal sometimes use a coal scuttle decoratively.
The word scuttle comes, via Middle English and Old English, from the Latin word Scutlla, meaning a shallow pan."
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