Silver-plated breakfast tureens, as sold by the likes of Mappin & Webb, were once a staple of breakfast tables in genteel households which might have employed a maid and a cook who prepared kippers, kedgeree, and devilled kidneys. This could be the sort of welcoming breakfast table at which Louisa presides in Greenbanks: fresh bread and flowers, eggs and fruit, a Brown Betty teapot, and various pieces of silverware in a light-filled room. This is 'Breakfast is Ready' (c1919) by Stanley Thorogood (1873-1953) who became superintendent of art instruction for Stoke-on-Trent. Hence, perhaps, the good quality tableware. It is in The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery.

Dorothy Whipple has a genius for the telling, often heart-breaking, detail. For Mrs Ashburne  in Someone at a Distance, her 'silver pepper-castor, salt-cellar and mustard-pot, half-in, half-out of their tissue paper-wrappings' represent what is left of her family home. She knows that once she takes her 'own table-silver' down to the dining room, the move to the 'private hotel' will be 'irrevocable'. Her precious silver could have been painted by Sir William Nicholson (1872-1949), who demonstrates in 'Silver' (1938, Tate ) his consummate skill in painting lustrous surfaces. 

This is the last week to see 'Thirty Pieces of Silver' (1988-89) at Tate Britain before the Cornelia Parker exhibition closes. It comprises one thousand silver objects which were flattened by a steamroller at the request of the artist. As an installation it is stunning, but it is also fascinating as a reminder of all the items of silverware that have been mostly discarded: tureens, toast racks, sugar tongs, sauce boats, candlesticks, trophies, cigarette cases, cake stands, and all sorts of cutlery. They represent a different way of housekeeping and dining, examples of which can be found in so many Persephone books, such as The Shuttle. In later books eg Milton Place and A House in the Country the silverware is no doubt left to become tarnished in cupboards and velvet-lined boxes until it is finally dispensed with when more people began to run their homes without help.

Mosaics are still a modern medium in France. The anonymous artist based in Lyon who signs their work Ememem describes what they do as 'flacking' (from the word flaque or puddle). Since 2016 the artist has filled nids-de-poule or hens' nests (the imaginative French phrase for potholes), cracks, broken pavements and gutters with mosaics, creating pansements de trottoir or pavement plasters which, as the website says, recall "traditional Japanese kintsugi, the art of repairing while enhancing." Ememem is now widely sought-after in France and elsewhere; a vast gallery of street mosaics can be found on their Instagram account. 

Isidore Odorico's mosaics are now regarded as part of Brittany's patrimoine or heritage. Happily, they, like many other mosaics of the same period, are being rediscovered as businesses change hands, premises are repurposed, floors are stripped back, and shop signs are removed to reveal beautiful lettering underneath. All this requires careful restoration; this stunning pharmacie sign (1920) in Quimperlé has been skilfully brought back to life by Pierre Larquetou.

With the growing appreciation of Odorico mosaics come the guided tours, books, exhibitions, and careful cataloguing and archiving of Isidore Odorico's work. The Musée de Bretagne in Rennes has a lovely collection of original designs for businesses and signs, such as this one for a butcher's shop (c1935-40). Without it being official, the Museum says, there is a tradition of using certain colours to indicate the nature of different shops: red for butchers and charcuteries, blue for fishmongers, yellow for bakers. Here Odorico creates a striking design which advertises the Boucherie Lucas 'de façon colorée et joyeuse' (in a colourful, joyful way). 

In the 1920s and 1930s, mosaics were considered easy to clean and hygienic. The Odorico atelier was often commissioned by wealthy patrons to create magnificent bathrooms, but their washable mosaics were also sited in many public places. A spectacular scheme can be admired by swimmers in the municipal Piscine Saint-Georges in Rennes (1926, still in use) while the crèche Papu (1934, also in Rennes) has a charming railway-theme frieze with steam trains and wagons, station and station master, which runs the length of a corridor. In a classroom there is a playful scene with swans and cygnets at young child's eye level (above). More charming details can be seen in this video.