Wrought iron. No pics. Is this a thing?

Currently reading a Ngaio Marsh mystery called "Death of a Fool". The thing is that early on a character, a researcher in folklore, visits a family owned smithy, very old, very traditional, and remarks. "I know all about those spiral irons on your lovely old walls there. They're fire charms, are they not?"

Are wrought iron fire charms a thing? They certainly sound bigger than jewelry.

 

Oh, Ngaio Marsh... I read most of her mystery novels, years ago. Loved them at the time. It has been a while. Let's see, she was from New Zealand. Maybe it was something relevant to that part of the world? I can't seem to find much in a quick search.

 

In the story, it's English folklore that's relevant. No one carries a lantern, for instance, but there's plenty of lanthorns (lant-horn), an archaic word for essentially the same thing. (The story takes place in the 1950s)

Marsh seems to like old (ancient) references and apparently did read up on English folklore used here as source material.

Online I've found wrought iron spiral pendants, and small things called Troll Crosses, but they're all new, and no Fire Charms.

The use of spirals in metalwork no doubt goes back to prehistory, but I can't find anything being called a fire charm.

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=Y...PA27#v=onepage&q=“fire charm” history&f=false

 

Here are some things I now know:

1. Fire charms are used in Minecraft.
2. Fire charms are used in d&d
3. OCR misreads "charges" as "charms" a lot.
4. A surprising number of newspaper paragraphs include a sentence that ends with "fire" followed by a sentence that starts with "charges."

I found nothing. There are wrought iron spiral "bird cage" things that are design elements of table legs and candlesticks and I thought that was where we were headed, but... no evidence of "fire charm" in use with such.