576 – Seahorse
- Physical description:
- Large cream-coloured seahorse with tail wrapped with tiny white glass beads.
- Museum classification:
- Sea Witchcraft
- Size:
- 160 x 50 x 10 mm
- Information:
Scarborough Museum has a good luck charm consisting of four seahorses joined together, which was brought back to England from Chioggia on the Adriatic by a sailor in 1922; and also two very pretty glass seahorse charms - one originally from Yugoslavia, worn against the evil eye and collected in Scarborough in 1939, and one from Murano (c.1891), used as a house good luck charm (information supplied by Tabitha Cadbury - see her report 'The Clarke Collection of Charms and Amulets' in the museum library.)
The use of dried seahorses as good luck charms in Lausanne, Switzerland, is mentioned in Georges Simenon's novel 'Maigret and the Lazy Burglar', published in 1961.
- Resource:
- Object
- Materials:
- Animal, glass
Scarborough Museum has a good luck charm consisting of four seahorses joined together, which was brought back to England from Chioggia on the Adriatic by a sailor in 1922; and also two very pretty glass seahorse charms - one originally from Yugoslavia, worn against the evil eye and collected in Scarborough in 1939, and one from Murano (c.1891), used as a house good luck charm (information supplied by Tabitha Cadbury - see her report 'The Clarke Collection of Charms and Amulets' in the museum library.)
The use of dried seahorses as good luck charms in Lausanne, Switzerland, is mentioned in Georges Simenon's novel 'Maigret and the Lazy Burglar', published in 1961.