Quirky specialist museums are a bit of a guilty pleasure. It is not always the artifacts that interest me but the obsession and dedication of the human curators, collectors and conservators that gather, protect and display random objects with a common theme.

Often specialist museums are run by volunteers who are doing their absolute best with a small budget and limited professional input.

In a fancy pants museum a cauldron, made in about 1660 and retrieved, by divers from the wreck of HMS Coronation would be on a plinth in a glass case. I would look at it in wonder at the beautiful abstract patterns created by nearly 400 years of wear and tear many of those years 5 metres under the sea just off Penlee Point. Not too far from home.

But in the Devonport Dockyard Museum the cauldron calmly rests on the floor with almost no signage or fanfare. Enabling me to cause absolutely no harm and take these gorgeous, to me, abstract photos of patination created entirely by coppersmiths who lived 400 years ago and the sea.

I was so thrilled  by the abstraction I completely forgot to take a photograph of the whole object!

I am going to have to go back…