I often wonder what stories an old ware holds and what it meant to the owner. Was it proudly displayed on a shelf or tucked away and forgotten in a box? The value is always one of perception and to treasure hunt in its truest meaning, is to seek out the ‘meaningful’. A watercolour on old paper and signed by an unknown artist may be a masterpiece simply for its beauty. A box of crystal prisms, some cloudy with age, could have once adorned a great palace. Perhaps they were parts of a Versailles chandelier?

Somewhere in between antiquity and imagination lie the treasures.

My Sunday Places Notebook takes me to the largest place for treasure hunting in the world, the Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen in Paris. It comprises some 2,500 stores, spread across 15 markets. Yes, I count this as a bucket list place!

Established around 1870, ‘Marché aux Puces’ translates to ‘flea market’. It earned the name because of the flea-infested furniture and other wares sold at the market by the crocheteurs, ‘hook men’, for they used hooks (‘crochets’) to scour through garbage, picking through junk for objects they hoped to sell.

Yes, that is how it originated but today you can expect to find everything from exquisite 17th century decorative arts, to books, postcards and vintage clothing, and large architectural items such as mantelpieces, bookshelves, and stairs. It is a feast for the treasure hunter!

For me, the treasures were many because I see the ‘meaningful’ in the smallest trinket. Fortunately, I was with a group or I would have easily and happily remained absorbed in one booth!

Some were quirky little odds and ends that I found amusing and I wondered how I could transform them into art. The multiples of simple items became works of sculpture. Art Deco luminaires hung disparate and glorious from metal grids and I was drawn in by groupings of bright hued mid-century chairs. Remnants of what once was and perhaps no longer pristine; these hold the romance of another time and place.

I didn’t find a rare Picasso sketch, but I did proudly walk away with a small bag holding the most beautiful watercolour signed by an unknown artist. I wonder who he was and if his dreams would have been that his art be sold a century later.