Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

She also comes in coral:


And silvered:



This last one is a little box, which hopeful sellers often describe as amber, tortoise or horn. I finally managed to get one at a price that wasn't too bad. I see them all the time, so wanted to handle one. How anyone could mistake it for anything but some kind of plastic...

This summer went to a crafts show I used to attend more regularly & caught up with a guy whom I hadn't seen in a while. The first time I saw his work, big silver cuff bracelets, which sell for hundreds of dollars each, I gave him grief for using resin cameos like Ponytail Girl when he could be using real ones without cutting too far into his profits. I got a somewhat grumpy reaction, can't blame him much. It was either another day of that show or the same show later in the year that I brought a few loose cameos to him & sold him one.

This summer many of his bracelets featured large, very well cut shell cameos. When he finished with a customer, I asked how the cameos were doing for him. He didn't quite remember me at first, reminded him I was the person who convinced him to try real ones. They are doing great for him. When he goes to trade jewellery shows the first thing he looks for are cameos suitable for his work.

I bring him up because he also had a bracelet with our girl here (I think of her as Nouveau Lady). I checked with him that he knew she was artificial; it was clear he wasn't quite sure. She makes a handsome bracelet though; she's large enough for the scale of his pieces.

 

He can get dismounted real cameos for about the same price as the fakes these days, so might as well use the real deal.

 

That's pretty much what I told him. Think he did not realize that on places like eBay there are loose cameos for sale. Considering the prices, can't imagine pieces with modern resin cameos could have sold very well for him. At least I hope not.

He doesn't have any cameo pieces on his web site, he doesn't have very many pieces at all. Think crafts shows are his main venue. You'd think with the name Tommy Conch, shell cameos would be a natural:

https://tommyconch.com/cart/viewCategory.cfm?categoryID=2

 

I wonder if he's from south Florida and that's a nickname. Even so, you'd think. I looked at his show schedule, and he did one about 10 miles from me but it's one I don't go to. It's all new stuff, so why bother.

 

When my friend who deals in coins & engraved gems, but considers the Renaissance late, turns up his nose at some Victorian treasure of mine, I point out that if there had not been people who appreciated things in their own time & supported their making by paying to have them, & others who continued to value & preserve them, there would not be anything for him to deal in.

 

True. I appreciate some of the new things, but the pieces good enough to save cost more than I can usually spend. Oddly the really old pieces can be a better deal. The artisan doesn't have to pay the grocery bill any more with the latter.

 

When I saw this group of cameos, I was sure there had to be a Silz/Sll/Schmoll among them. There is at least one that is & another may also be signed. Care to guess which? (Using image search is cheating!)

 

Total guess, top left and bottom left?

 

I'll take bottom right; she seems the best carved of the bunch.

 

Also a total guess, since I haven't been following details of the person's style: Bottom left and top right?

 

Will save the big reveal for a while to give some of the other regulars a crack at it.

 

To make comparison easier, these are ones that have been shown in these pages or the cameo signatures thread:

 

Popping out of lurking to share my latest find. Her little braids convinced me she needed to come live here and definitely could use a good cleaning once I find the part in this thread that tells me how to do that.



Not much story with this other than it’s adorable and inexpensive ($54). I think the setting is a base metal and I haven’t seen any markings. I like the design of the mount when I saw it online but it looks like it’s chipped the edge of the shell. The fun and associated dangers of online buying...

 

Thanks! Now I'm thinking the large one towards the top left side. Partly because of the eye and partly the hair. (And also the carver seemed to like just doing heads at times.)

I still think the bottom left and top right ones have similarities to each other, which is why I picked them before.

 

Totally uneducated guess: top right?

 

Trying to go with gut and not overthink it, I'm going with the following.

 

I just set one down so I could type with both hands. She's about to go back in her bath of ordinary tap water with a dab of dish washing liquid. Because I was eager to see her, took her out after a short soak & gave her a going over with my little Winnie-the-Pooh toothbrush. She has an elaborate hairdo that is hanging on to the grunge, so, back she goes. I often let shell cameos soak over night, if there is nothing about how they are set that precludes it. The hydration is good for them.

Think your girl is based on an image known as the Fair Circassian (there is also a Fair Laundress).

 

Let's see if we can get @bluumz in on this too. Won't keep you wondering too much longer. To my eye there are 4 that easily could be his, so most guesses are reasonable.

 

I almost posted a second message that said "all of them..."

But there were a couple of things I couldn't reconcile, so I left it. Until now.

 

This is the one that has gone back to soak some more. F Negroni (pretty sure Negroni; there's a splotch of Byne's where there should be an r, but don't know what else it would be); line below, instead of fecit, looks like it says fece or feca, with what I assume is the same intent; then down at the bottom, Roma. There was a workshop full of 'Neri's & later a 'Negri', who started in Rome but ended up in NYC. There was a jeweller who specialized in damascene work named Filippo Negroni. In the 16th century.