Vintage Sterling Silver Cake/Birthday Cake Charms/Cake Pulls

This set of sterling silver cake charms are fun and unique!
Typically a wedding tradition to predict the fortune of the 'pulley' (bridesmaid) these are made for a birthday cake to be used in the same tradition.

It includes a thimble (old maid), a ring ( matrimony), a wishbone ( good luck), a button ( bachelor), a heart (love)
This set is in the original box which does have some surface watermarks as seen in pictures but is sturdy with only minor rubbing on the edges. It measures 1" 3 1/4" x 3 1/4"
I have left the charms in the original patina I found them in and will leave that to their new owner if they choose to clean them.

Cake charms (or “cake pulls”, as they’re sometimes called) are, traditionally, sterling silver charms attached to ribbons and placed in or underneath the wedding cake, a tiny charm with a ribbon attached was placed into a cake and the wedding party (single bridesmaids) would pull the ribbon and receive their fortune. Typically each charm represents a different fortune or meaning.
There are eight classic charms historically used for ribbon pulls, each with its own meaning.  The ring (which indicates the next to get married), the horseshoe or the four-leaf clover (signifying good luck), the telephone (offering good news), the anchor (encouraging hope), the heart (indicating impending love), the thimble or the button (revealing the old maid), and the penny (meaning poverty).  While these are the charms used most often, a cake pull can have up to twenty different charms for the various single friends of the bride.

Ribbon or cake pulling was brought to America by our English speaking counterparts in the United Kingdom.  Ribbon pulling has antecedents in English, Irish, and Scottish cultures that date back even as far as the 1600s.
           In 17th century England it was a tradition for the bride to have charms sewed onto the skirt of her dress.  These charms would later be pulled from the dress by the bridesmaids and kept as tokens of luck and friendship.  It is believed that over the course of many decades, the trinkets were transferred from the dress to cakes, creating the Victorian tradition of baking a ring into a “bride’s pie”.  The bride’s pie was the first example of a true wedding cake, and the woman to find the ring was said to be the next to get married.
           Northern Ireland used a similar tradition to divine the futures of single women on Hallow’s Eve.  The Irish baked talismans into dense fruit cakes called “bracks” or “barmbracks”.  The talisman or token the woman revealed in her brack on Hallowe’en was meant to tell her future in the same way that cake pulls are meant to now. 
Cake pulls are still very popular in southern weddings and are sentimental in many wedding receptions