FORGED IN TRADITION: Cowboy Cauldron offers cookware that brings folks out to the fire.

AuthorPeterson, Eric S.

Forging is an industry hammered right into the foundations of Utah's history. Newly arrived Mormon pioneers produced nails, shod horses, erected temples, and even forged the hammer and the spike that joined the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point.

It didn't last. Forgeries became factories, and metals became plastics. Our oceans filled with plastic straws and our smartphones became outdated before we figured out how to use them. That didn't stop Mike Bertelsen from dreaming of the former and eschewing the latter. There was something that drew him to a rugged cauldron simmering over a roaring fire, rather than the aimless scrollings on an !Phone screen.

Mr. Bertelsen realized the power of the cauldron while working as a DC lobbyist, navigating the halls of power and bending the ears of senators on behalf of the financial industry. Despite the gravitas of the job, it lacked something solid, something he only found when he gave up the rigor of the Beltway and started blacksmithing big, heavy cooking cauldrons.

Mr. Bertelsen grew up in Brigham City. He received his law degree from The University of Utah and worked in DC, first as staff counsel for the House Banking Committee, and then as a lobbyist for the mutual fund industry to the US Senate. Despite playing in the House of Cards realm of DC politics, Mr. Bertelsen kept grounded by bowhunting near his home in Mount Vernon.

Initially, cauldron crafting was just a hobby for Mr. Bertelsen. He built his first cauldron as a way to entertain guests and cook meats over an open fire. Friends would join, and before long, he was amazed to find even cynical political operatives and lobbyists relaxing and letting their guards down around the fire. "I dubbed them the 'Cauldron Society' and we used to say what happens at the fire, stays at the fire," Mr. Bertelsen says.

People offered to buy the cauldron so often that it soon became his passion project. He called it the Cowboy Cauldron, growing the company slowly until a promotion by Napastyle Dynasty's celebrity chef, Michael Chiarello turned Mr. Bertelsen's craft into a luxury item. Now, the...

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