I wrote an article a while ago about my antique micro-mosaic pillbox, which holds tiny mementoes. Small things from my confirmation, graduation, 21st birthday, favourite beach. Among them (though I did not mention it in the article) are two tiny red hollowed-out seed pods with elephant stoppers, each holding 100 tiny bone elephants. I was given them when I was about 6, which would have been in the 1960s.
One of my readers spotted them and asked me about them, because she too had had some when she was little. I then noticed that many people were asking about these in a Facebook group dedicated to identifying items. It seems they have been a part of many people’s lives. Some of these pods contain 12 elephants, some of them have 100 elephants, and some of them even contain other types of animals.
I did some digging and found this article about them.. It also seems that the little elephants are carved from vegetable ivory.
Read more here
