Elkan & Co Seal, Image & Found by Barry Norris.
Found on Essex/Hertfordshire border.
Dia. = 25mm max. Thick = 6mm Weight = 17g
Both sides appear to have the same markings of EKLAN & Co curved around the top and .HAMBURG. curved around the bottom.
From the extract below it would seem that Eklan & Co were shipping agents active in the 1860's.
This was taken from the company history of SCHENKER-RHENUS AG
Schenker-Rhenus AG's origins can be traced back to Däniken, a small village in Switzerland, where Gottfried Schenker, the son of a locksmith, was born on February 14, 1842. The Schenker family had lived in Däniken for many generations, but Gottfried moved beyond his home territory, studying law at Heidelberg University and then taking up a post as an official with the Swiss Central Railway in Basel in 1865. In 1866 he moved on to join a private transport company, Braff & Eckert, agents for the French Eastern Railway. This company sent him to Vienna to supervise a grain shipment in 1867. Disputes with his superiors and difficulties in obtaining railroad cars brought Schenker to the point of exhaustion, and after a period in the hospital at the end of 1867 he left this company to take over the Vienna office of forwarding agents Elkan & Co. of Hamburg. Schenker organized large rail consignments for this company, ensuring the most efficient and profitable use of goods capacity. He sent, for example, railway construction materials from France via Switzerland to Austria, and shipments of tobacco and food in the opposite direction.
Schenker, now based permanently in Vienna, was married in 1869. He found time on his honeymoon to arrange a deal for transporting rail carriage parts from Switzerland to Romania. By this time he had decided to work for himself and left Elkan & Co. to set up his own office, where he began arranging discount shipments. At the beginning of 1872 he was introduced to Moritz Karpeles and Moritz Hirsch, both in their 30s and owners of a freight forwarding company. They were impressed by Schenker's plans for expanding the international forwarding business into southeastern and western Europe and for moving into sea transport via Trieste and Fiume. The three decided to start a company together, and Schenker & Co. was founded on July 1, 1872, officially incorporated at the Austro-Hungarian Commercial Court in Vienna. The starting capital was 50,000 guilders; Karpeles and Hirsch each provided 20,000, and Schenker provided 10,000. Despite his smaller share in the business Schenker was to receive 50 percent of the profits.
