[A Senefelder]

Fernando,

These don't seem much practical for frequent pick and pull moves; it would need some patience and accuracy to grab the object in a position to match it with the longitudinal section of the tongs.

Which is exactly why smithing takes practice ( and a willingness to suffer a burn or two ). This is however exactly how tongs are used. One utilizes them to 1) place an item into the fire as doing so by hand is an impossibility due to the intense heat, 2) to shift and item around in a fire to heat evenly or check that the item is heated to what is desired, 3) to remove the heated item from the fire, and 4) to hold the item while it is hot and being worked with a hammer or in other words the entire time the item it hot. A square piece of bar stock will not seat anywhere near as firmly in a set of tongs with flat jaws so square jaws are used, but a much smaller piece of square stock will not seat firmly if at all in a larger set of square pickup tongs so various sizes are needed. The same applies to round stock pick up tongs ect. Throw into this the ingenuity of smiths on the job who tended to make up their own tools if they did not have the right one for a job and there is a wide variety of tongs, many non standard one offs around. I have several antique 19th century tongs around that we still haven't figured out what they may have been used for. To give you some idea of the variety ( and this is a small sampling ) this is a link to one company's offerings of tongs http://www.centaurforge.com/Tongs/departments/102/ If you do a search on Epray under Collectibles, Tools,Locks, Hardware and type in " blacksmith tongs " hundreds of examples come up. I mention this only by way of illustrating the wide variety of tongs that were made over the years.

None of this means in any way that the item in the OP are square stock pick up tongs, that is simply what they look like given the 4-5 sets of them that I have both new and antique and the similarity to them in the manner in which the jaws of this item are designed and built.

Its non simple design, lance shaped handle, horn prongs and all, besides making it appear less western, may also indicate this is a device to use under ritual circumstances.

I am inclined to agree, for all the antique tools, hammers, stakes, anvils, tongs ect. I use and the hundereds more I've seen over the years of tool searching, they are all about function rather than decoration, many being very plain and baring the marks of smith made tools. This is finished and decorated to a much higher level than the metalworking tools I've encountered ( primarily America 19th century ).