No, these are not Christmas decorations. My girlfriend is searching the house where her grandmother and her aunt have lived…

At first glance, the objects look like strange dark, heavily textured items resembling oversized pinecones or antique decorative hardware.

Each one has a small loop at the top, suggesting they were meant to be hung, but their surprising weight makes a purely decorative purpose unlikely.A woman found a large number of these objects while going through her grandmother’s old house, where several generations of the family had lived.

Their unusual appearance and solid metal construction immediately raised questions about what they were originally used for.