Treasure Hunting!

Once the snowy conditions improved earlier this week I had a jaunt to Dowhnam Market, a town about 20 miles from here just over the border into Norfolk. My paternal grandparents retired to this town (from Essex) when I was a baby and so I spent a fair bit of my childhood there little knowing I would end up living so close by as an adult. I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Downham and always enjoy visiting. ;o) On Tuesday I popped into a little antique shop that I love to browse about in and found some delightful treasures! The shop is a series of little rooms run by a lovely, somewhat eccentric and always talkative, elderly lady. The rooms are packed to the gunnells with all manner of interesting fodder for a junkie of all things used like me! At the back of the shop is a room where all the less interesting (to others!) stuff is heaped on shelves and all over the floor. Rummaging about I found an ice cream box full of wooden pieces, covered in filth and long ignored, they were just desperate to be liberated! ;o)



The shop owner didn't remember where they came from but they look to me like they have come from a church. Any ideas? I haven't cleaned them up yet but alot of the pieces are painted gold in part. There was over 80 pieces in the box including some decorative brass upholstery pins and a sweet little trowel.

Also in the back room was a huge hanger, I estimated about 150, of different brass escutcheons, I would've loved to have bagged the whole lot (and may go back to bargain with her I think) but I couldn't afford her price so had to be content with these few babies:



I also found this lovely silver coloured piece amongst a heap of tins, I don't think it's real silver, it's certainly not hallmarked, and I'm not sure what it is, possibly a napkin ring, but I loved the pattern and think it'll be a base for a pendant. It's about 5 inches long now it's flattened out.



Whilst waiting for my haul to be wrapped it was pointed out to me that there were more shelves of goodies behind where I was standing so, of course, I found some more treasures to up my ever increasing bill! These keys are gorgeous:



There's 42 in the bunch, all different, and none of them are longer than an inch or so.

Last but not least, I found this set of rubber stamps:



They're all wood mounted and haven't seen much use by the look of them. Not really sure what they would've been for, connected with the weight of parcels maybe? They'll be fun to use in art journals and collage pieces. ;o)

I'm in the mood for more scavenging now....