Strange things...

... on the banks of the Thames today at low tide... I enjoy beachcombing. Today I came home with a pocketful of what look like well-weathered porcelain beads. They are about 1/4 inch in diameter and 1 to 2 inches long, with a narrow hole down the centre. They are mainly ivory in colour but some have a rusty tinge. There is a necklace made out of them by a contemporary jeweller in the Victoria & Albert Museum. They are the broken stems of porcelain pipes used to smoke tobacco in the coffee houses of Georgian London, as in this photo. They snapped easily and were thrown, with the rest of the rubbish, into the Thames, where they are still rolling round on the beaches today. I collected enough to start my own necklace. I'll blip it when I finish it :-)