A little while back I won an auction for some unusual looking insulators. The seller had them listed as livestock fence insulators. I had my doubts but though these were pretty neat plus I saw the porcelain pieces listed before and sold for a hefty price. That auction had listed them as no-tie insulators. When I got these, I noticed there was no way these were used for fence or electrical applications. What were they? After doing some research with sparce results, I found out that these are actually ceramic thread guides for industrial use. They are all unmarked but are very neat especialy with the blue glaze. The seperate small pieces were probably mounted on a bracket or something. The ones on the brackets measure 1 1/4" X 3/4". The whole bracket with the ceramics measure 4" X 3" X2 1/2". The little do dads measure: Blue finger type 1 1/2" X 3/4" X 1/2" ,White type 1" X 3/4" X 3/8". My guess is they seperated threads along the line while the metal brackets with the rollers on them guided the threads and provided tension. I have not found any company that makes this style yet.