Antique Copper Bassine à Confiture

Come high summer, when the fruit came in faster than anyone could eat it, out came the big copper pan to turn it into jam for the year. Found in Le Perche and dating to the 19th century, it is a wide, shallow copper pan with two iron ring handles, the kind the French call a bassine à confiture, a jam basin. The finest of these came from Villedieu-les-Poêles in Normandy, a town that has beaten copper by hand for so long it is known as the cité du cuivre, the city of copper, and copper was the jam-maker's metal because it spreads heat fast and evenly for a clean, quick set. Sylvie keeps it out on the counter heaped with fruit, or fills it with ice and bottles when people come over.