Atkin Brothers Sterling Silver Flatware with Canteen

• Oak - Native to Europe and England, oak has been used for joinery, furniture and building since the beginning of the medieval civilisation. It is a pale yellow in colour when freshly cut and darkens with age to a mid brown colour.
  
  Oak as a furniture timber was superceded by walnut in the 17th century, and in the 18th century by mahogany,
  
  Semi-fossilised bog oak is black in colour, and is found in peat bogs where the trees have fallen and been preserved from decay by the bog. It is used for jewellery and small carved trinkets.
  
  Pollard oak is taken from an oak that has been regularly pollarded, that is the upper branches have been removed at the top of the trunk, result that new branches would appear, and over time the top would become ball-like. . When harvested and sawn, the timber displays a continuous surface of knotty circles. The timber was scarce and expensive and was used in more expensive pieces of furniture in the Regency and Victorian periods.
• Canteen - A small cabinet, table or a box with drawers or lift out trays, for storing a set of cutlery.
• Flatware - An alternative name for items of cutlery, principally knives, forks and spoons, now generally used to describe sets of these implements. Nowadays it is mostly used when describing cutlery made of silver and silver plate.
  
  It is less frequently used to describe all "flat' items of tableware, so that as well as cutlery the definition includes plates.
• Sterling Silver - Sterling silver is a mixture of 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% of another metal, usually copper. Fine silver is 99.9% pure silver, and is relatively soft and the addition of the very small amount of copper gives the metal enough strength and hardness to be worked into jewellery, decorative and household objects.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• Atkin Brothers (Sheffield) - silver, maker or retailer 73
• silver cutlery / flatware, settings - canteens / boxes 637