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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bronwen, post: 4487910, member: 5833&quot;]Thanks.&nbsp; Really need to take a day &amp; catch up on gentleman.&nbsp; Every so often I notice I also have many photos of unidentified men &#039;collected&#039; before I had any thoughts of a Pinterest board.&nbsp; The gents are so much more plentiful than the ladies.</p><p><br /></p><p>I think your guy is assembled glass, like this one:</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/36/1b/1c/361b1c1fccd78299d506ccf73c56a668.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Doesn&#039;t mean they are actual Tassie products, but must be Someone, to have been made in multiples.</p><p><br /></p><p>I have a whole body of speculation built up around this one of Mary Meredith:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]390758[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>At the truncation there are what looks to me like the initials WL with sort of a superscript F inside the crook of the L.&nbsp; Have never managed a good photo, must try sometime with a microscope:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]390759[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>I speculate that the initials are those of William Lane, who exhibited at the Royal Academy for a handful of years as a rather mediocre gem engraver, judging by impressions of his work in the Tassie collection.&nbsp; Later in this period he also exhibited some gem impressions as well as a model in &#039;enamel&#039; (what Tassie called his proprietary, extra hard, white glass paste) for a portrait gem of Mrs Siddons, a famous actress of her day.&nbsp; He disappears for some years, reappearing at the RA as a portrait artist, doing drawings in crayon.</p><p><br /></p><p>Forrer, in his Biographical Dictonary ,Supplement A-L, says Lane worked for the Tassies.&nbsp; Also that he signed his gems WL or Lane F.</p><p><br /></p><p>So my thinking is that Lane did the modeling for Mary Meredith, as a commission from her second husband, Lord Campbell, working from the engraving, which is by an unknown artist, perhaps showing her before she married the infamous Earl Ferrers, the last peer to be hanged in Britain.</p><p><br /></p><p>Hers is a sad story.&nbsp; The fourth earl was cruel &amp; debauched, holding her captive for a time.&nbsp; She was finally free of him when Ferrers was hanged for the murder of a steward who was helping Mary.&nbsp; She married Campbell, a younger son of a duke, &amp; died, at the age of 70, in a fire at the family country home, set, according to one source, because she &#039;...was addicted to the dangerous practice of reading in bed...&#039;[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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