Our Original Horseshoe Heart, skilfully hand forged from one whole used horseshoe. Crafted with care to retain wear marks and character of it’s old form combined with simple, clean lines of a traditional heart. Tail End Jewellery with over 18 years experience with braiding horsehair will place an exquisitely crafted braid into the fullering of the heart on each side. Hand stamped personalisation is also available, either over the arches of the heart or elsewhere if space allows. Create the ultimate keepsake. Entirely bespoke and unique to you and your horse.
The Horseshoe Heart – Details
We can create these stunning hearts from your own horse’s shoes or use shoes from our own stock. Dirt, nails and rust are no problem, we can produce a lovely result even from shoes that are years old. Each shoe is first carefully cleaned by hand, and clips and nails are removed. Every now and then a nail head may be very reluctant to leave a shoe and so it remains part of the heart. They are then hand forged over an anvil. The process doesn’t end there, the hearts are rasped and buffed to removed any sharp edges and if required personalisation is hand stamped now. Each shoe has it’s own story and we aim to retain this in the completed heart. Every Heart as unique as the shoe it was forged from.
If you do not have a shoe from your own horse or pony but would still like to incorporate your horse hair into a Horseshoe Heart we can supply a shoe for you. On checkout, or in with your horse’s hair, please send a note with detail about your horse or pony the hair is from. Their height, breed, build and any other characteristics that may help us. We can then select an appropriately sized shoe to create your heart from. If your pony was a small 12.2hh we will chose a smaller shoe to reflect that, likewise a 17hh Warmblood would wear a different sized shoe to a 15hh heavy cob. Barry has many years experience as a farrier so will use this to select a shoe as close as possible to the details you provide.
Horsehair Details
We will need you to send enough horse tail hair to be able to complete two braids, one on each side of the heart. As a guide please supply a minimum length of 40cm and approx a pencil thickness quantity of hair for the Braided Horsehair Horseshoe. If you do not have this amount or only have mane hair please contact us and we will do our best to help advise you and see if we can incorporate some of that hair into one of these special Horseshoe Hearts. Any spare hair will be returned to you with your braided horseshoe. Sometimes the wear on a shoe or the style or brand of the shoe may affect the placing of the braiding. If we feel this may be of concern we will contact you to discuss when your horseshoe and horsehair arrive with us.
Lead Times
Please note due to the bespoke nature of these Horseshoe Hearts and both Tail End Jewellery & Horseshoe Hearts working together means lead times may be longer than standard. Please be advised that lead time for these special keepsakes is currently 3 weeks from receiving your Horsehair and/or Horseshoes here with us.
How should I send my Horsehair and Horseshoes?
We ask that you send your shoes and hair to us, and select return delivery, via Special Delivery. This is because of tracking that you receive with this service. Standard Royal Mail Signed For is not a tracked service. We want your horsehair and horseshoes to stay as safe as possible and while we cannot eliminate risk entirely we believe Special Delivery – where items are tracked and signed for – is the safest way for precious shoes and hair from your special friends to travel.
More from Tail End Jewellery
Alison offers a whole range of beautiful horseshair jewellery. To see more just click here to visit her website.
Packaging
Your order will arrive with you in a branded jute gift bag.
They are ethically sourced and made of a natural fibre so you can just pop the ribbon out and pop it on the compost where it will break down naturally. Though we hope you may like to keep your jute bag and reuse it. Perhaps to store potatoes, carrots, maybe some grooming brushes or your plaiting kit, depending on the bag size. We’d love to hear what you come up with!
We have to confess, nostalgia did play a part in our choice! Do you remember those old jute horse rugs of days gone by? They were so heavy! Secured with a roller! A far cry from the modern horse rugs we see today! Did you know Mr HH’s father was also a farrier? Barry remembers the big jute sacks full of shoes that were delivered to his father’s forge.
So, for us, these rustic little bags made the perfect choice to present our horseshoe creations in. A small acknowledgement of where we came from, while being eco friendly which is a real necessity moving forwards.
We aim to use wherever possible 100% recyclable card & paper packaging, including the tape on the postal boxes, so you can pop it all into the recycling bin once you order arrives safely with you.
