Q: I bought this metal plaque at an antique store in the Kawartha Lakes district of Ontario, Canada, last year. It measures 15 inches from flat edge to flat edge and has two spots on the back where something may have been screwed into it to fix it to something else. There's some pitting to the chrome, which suggests it has been outside and exposed to the elements. The bottom right is marked "Fecit, Joseph Anthony Atchison."

A: Joseph Anthony Atchison (1895-1967) was an American sculptor and painter. Atchison made the official medal for Franklin D. Roosevelt's second inauguration in 1937 and another medal honoring Babe Ruth as "The King of Swat" in 1948, the year Ruth died. Some of Atchison's work is in the Smithsonian Institution. The word "fecit" means "he made," the equivalent of "made by." Your Atchison plaque is aluminum and dates from about 1950. A plaque identical to yours but perhaps in better condition auctioned for $1,700 in 2010.