Mortar and Pestle

This large bronze mortar may have been used in the kitchen for crushing ingredients or in a pharmacy for making medicines. Inscribed with: 'R. LONG CLEMENT TOSIEAR CAST ME IN THE YEAR 1717'. The first mention of a Clement Tosier is found in a book Strangers in Salisbury, 1678, where parishes recorded incomers to the city who may be evading tax. Clement is noted as a founder from Bristol with a wife and three children. One of his children, also called Clement, took up his father's profession and is the maker of this mortar - made a year before he died.