In this bit …
…it looks like there’s a hole in the top. It looks like a large
smoking-type pipe to me.
I’m not seeing a hole in that particular screen capture. She has it upside down and is looking at the handle (which comes off later in the scene). The top of the object seems to be where that decorative bit of silver (some kind of bird, I think) is sticking out, which is pointing down in this shot. If you play the video at 0.25 speed and full screen, at 0.44 you get a pretty good look at the top of the object, and I still don’t see any hole. She shows it at a lot of different angles as she looks at it.
The object is very shiny, of course, so it’s possible to see reflections that look like something that isn’t there.
I know. That’s why it was wordplay.
She said “It stinks!” meaning it wasn’t a good gift. People in the audience old enough to recognize that it would eventually, literally smell bad if used as directed, therefore got a laugh out of it.
I see what you mean, but I can’t tell exactly what the purpose it.
Maybe, at least in states where it’s legal, old silent butlers could be repurposed as bongs.
…or the pipe stem !
Why, to smoke huge quantities of marijuana of course !
Nope, the top has some kind of figure on it that looks like a bird. You can clearly see it from other angles. And the handle is not open at the end - in other angles you can see that it’s a pretty standard silver round handle with a decorative bottom. The handle also comes off.
A silent butler is orobably the best guess so far. And it suits the collection of silverware for rich people. It also explains the removable handle, because you wouldn’t want to set such a thing on its side after it’s been filled.
Well I think it’s a Turkish coffee brewing thing. Maybe you’ve seen it where the coffee is heated by running that thingy through hot sand, heated in a wok like thing over a fire. Wish I had the right words, but I don’t know the name. I’ve seen it used in videos and it looked like this thing. It’s got a long handle so you don’t burn your hand, and a spout so once it’s boiling you can easily reach across and pour in into one of those little cups.
Anyway, that’s my guess.
When i said “top”, i meant the part of the bowl that’s pointing upward as she’s
holding it.
Also, i don’t see how you can see that the handle/stem is not open at the end…
That’s not a bad guess, but the handle is underneath the thing. Turkish coffee handles stick out to the side and are usually wood or something that won’t conduct heat. You need that to grab the heated pot. With this, the handle would be buried underneath the pot in the sand. And the handle comes off easily, which is not something you’d want attached to a pot of hot coffee.
I think we have to accept that if many people have been trying to solve this for decades and haven’t, it’s likely a one-off device or a studio prop and we’ll never know what it is. It may not be anything at all, except a piece kit-bashed together by a prop maker from old sterling silver bits or something.
"When I was 3 & 4 is more than 50 years ago, and just about anyone I might have been with is dead. I’m not close enough to my mother’s cousin Joanie to feel comfortable calling her out of the blue, and saying “Remember when you used to babysit for me in 1970, and we met your boyfriend once at Tiffany’s…”
Different opinions are what make horse races. But I think you’re depending too much on a single very fuzzy screen grab of a very reflective object. If you run this section of the clip at full screen and slow it down to 1/4 speed, you can watch her turn it over and around. There is no hole down there by the handle.
Because at other points in the clip it is obvious that it isn’t.
If I belonged to one of those movie geek boards I probably wouldn’t have bothered the folks here with this question. It probably is a pointless prop designed to just be a gag.
It is an objet d’art, of great spiritual and cultural significance.
And you can put your weed in it.
I also tried looking at the Tiffany website to find something similar but could not. But perhaps there are vintage Tiffany catalogs on the web somewhere?