Nothing is certain but death, taxes, and soup. Wait, what? It's Tax Day in the United States, but paying taxes on goods and services is nothing new. The markings on these 18th-century soup tureens tell a story about the French "fermier" (​tax collector) who collected taxes from the silversmith who made them. When a product was made from precious metal in France, the maker would take the partially finished piece to a fermier to get it weighed and stamped with a charge mark. A fermier's stamp indicated the maker's intent to return and pay taxes on it. When a piece was finished, the maker would take it back to the fermier to weigh it once more and pay taxes. The fermier would put a discharge mark on the finished product to indicate that tax had been paid and the piece could be sold. On these soup tureens, there's a charge mark that looks like the letter A with a crown on its side, and a discharge mark that looks like a chancellor's mace with a crown on top. These marks show us that t...