A well travelled piece of silver ware.

From just after the start of Spring to the end of Summer most towns and villages in France organise a Foire à tout, literally - a market for everything, or as we British would say, a car boot sale. When we were on our holidays in Normandy last week we attended a really good one in Le Bec-Hellouin, recently voted "one of the most beautiful villages in France". The location map shows the village.

Being big-spenders we lashed out and spent 3 euros on this silver plate trinket. I'm not totally sure what it is; perhaps a candle stick, or a spill holder, but today I've used it to display some lavender flowers from the garden.

What I do know is that it is well travelled object. The marks on the base show that it was made by the company Elkington Plate, in England in 1901. It must then have gone to South Africa as the base is also engraved J Stern, Johannesburg, who was presumably a retail jeweller. At some point the piece came back to Europe, to France and now to Scotland.

George Richards Elkington and Henry Elkington invented a method of silver plating which they patented in the 1830s. In 1868, Queen Victoria permitted much of the British royal plate to be copied by Elkingtons and after that a convention was entered into by "several Princes of the reigning families of Europe" whereby they agreed mutually to assist the company in allowing copies of their own national objects for the process of art.

For its excellence in artistic quality and fine design for which the company has received the highest possible awards at the Great International Exhibitions, Elkington & Co was awarded the Legion d'Honneur of the French Republic and has held Royal Warrants to Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, Queen Alexandra, King George V, Queen Mary and King George VI, as well as the Duke of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII) and H.R.H. the late Princess Christian and their late majesties the King of Spain and King of Italy.

Elkington and Co were the suppliers of flatware to the luxury dining sections on board the Titanic and other ships in the White Star Line fleet.