This trinket, representing the upper body of a knight in armour from the Middle Ages which is missing its spearhead, was in fact a radiator cap from a Willys-Knight motor vehicle from the late 1920s. The Willys-Knight was manufactured by the Willys-Overland Company of Toledo, Ohio between 1914 and 1933.

At once useful and decorative, these radiator caps embellished the front of vehicles, since at that time, radiators were positioned outside the body of the car.

It was Charles-Édouard Côté who replaced the part, which screwed into the radiator with a pewter base, and made it into a trinket.

Charles-Édouard Côté was born in 1917 in the parish of Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Allégresses in Trois-Rivières. His parents were Marie-Jeanne Gaudet and Wilfrid Côté, a tobacconist.

The husband of Marguerite Dumais, who died in 2013, Charles-Édouard died in February 2016.

Donation from Charles-Édouard Côté
Musée Pierre-Boucher Collection
1980 194 A