M0000677: Glass rolling pin

Previous title, replaced May 2020: Glass rolling pin, 'To the girl I love'.

Photograph of a glass rolling pin, 'To the girl I love', a charm against shipwreck. Found in coastal districts in England and Wales, glass containers, shaped like rolling-pins and decorated with pictures, were filled with spirits, eau-de-colgne, tea, etc. and used as love-gifts between sailors and their sweethearts or wives. When empty, they were hung by ribbon on the sweetheart 's wall and regarded as talismans for luck. Their safety was believed to be in some way bound up with that of the absent sailor and their fall or breakage held to be the worst of omens for his fate. The item was previously part of the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum but is not held by Wellcome Collection.

01 January 1930

1 photograph glass plate negative; 12 x 16.5 cm

Catalogue data comes from a combination of entries in the original glass plate registers, metadata created when the glass plates were digitised in the early 2000s and enhancements made by the cataloguer in 2020.

This item is fragile. Email library@wellcomecollection.org to request access to the physical item.