Antique French mercantile scale weight

An antique French bronze weight with a sculptural bell-shaped form, engraved markings and a ring designed to suspend it from the hook of a mercantile scale. Its wonderfully worn surface and traces of verdigris reflect many years of practical use.

Patricia and Walter discovered the weight at a local brocante and gave it a new purpose at Chanteduc, where it served as a doorstop to hold the farmhouse doors open against the powerful Mistral. Both decorative and functional, it is a characterful piece of French commercial history and Provençal domestic life.