Cameos

This blog post is about cameos, the kind women wear as earrings, rings, on a chain, or as a brooch.  The ancient Romans invented the cameo, carving them out of glass…often images of powerful political figures.

It was during the Renaissance that cameos began to look like this…carved from sea shells.

The best cameo carvers in the world…hands down…were once in Trapani, a small city on the western tip of Sicily.  They’re not there any more, which is what makes this a good story.

When Napoleon’s army conquered Sicily, the emperor was smitten with the cameos he saw in Trapani.  He kidnapped most of the cameo carvers and had them shipped back to France to teach his countrymen the craft.  Those who escaped Napoleon’s dragnet fled to Sorrento and Naples and took their trade with them.

We saw the cameos shown in this blog post at Bimonte, the oldest cameo shop in Sorrento. 

Christain Bimonte, the grandson of the store's founder, explained how a cameo is made.  The term “cameo,” he told us, refers to the technique of scratching away shell to produce an image. The cameo as art jewelry can vary widely in appearance.

This is the classic...an oval piece containing the profile of a woman with a straight nose in a traditional Greek/Roman pose...set in gold or silver.

But cameos are not limited to women’s profiles.  Their subject matter can vary greatly.

Nor is the shape limited to the traditional oval.

The best quality cameos come from Cypraecassis Rufa shells.  They have a thin layer of reddish brown on the outside, a thick layer of white in the middle, and layer of brown on the inside.

A series of skilled artisans, each with a specific task to perform, prepare the shell for the carver.  

The first decides the cameo shape according to the shell's shape, using it to its best advantage. 

The cutter divides the shell into smaller pieces and shaping them.   Most often, the shell pieces are smoothed and rounded by grinding off the outer layer.  

At last, the carver glues the piece of shell to a wooden knob and is ready to begin.

He sketches a rough outline of the image he will carve on the shell.

Nunzio Balzano is the resident carver at Bimonte.  He is one of a small number of hand-carved cameo artisans left today.  His job takes, “highly developed artistic ability…and many years of experience.”

Nunzio uses these tools to scratch away the unwanted portion of the shell and then works on the inside surface, which becomes the background of the design.

Nunzio worked very fast, but the shell is hard, and the process is a slow one.

The quality of a cameo is determined by the fineness of the detail, the depth of the image, and whether individual scratch-marks are visible on the finished product.  Some very pretty images fail that quality test when viewed closely.  We looked at several and could see the blemishes through a magnifying glass but not without it.

Today, water-jet cutters in Asian factories can mass-produce striking cameos made out of artificially-dyed agate for a fraction of the cost of hand carving.  Experts can tell the difference, but the average consumer cannot.

This cameo glows with highlights from the outer shell emphasizing the delicate hand and cheeks of the woman.  It could only have been made by hand.  

Which would you rather have?  A factory-made knock-off, or this cameo hand-carved by Giuseppe Bimonte…Christain’s grandfather...who learned his art from the grandson of a refugee of Napoleon’s sack of Trapani?

Truly Trulli

This is a Trulli.  Nowhere else in Europe except for Puglia’s Itria Valley will you find these structures.  These buildings were first constructed in the late Middle Ages as storage sheds.  They later became shelters for farmers to duck out of a storm and eventually became peasant homes.

In many locandi (small hamlets), whole villages of Trulli popped up.  As with most things in this part of the world, Trulli have an interesting history.

When the Spanish ruled this part of Italy…beginning in the 15th century…they imposed heavy taxes on peasants’ permanent structures.  Trulli were an ideal way to evade these onerous taxes (Tax evasion is now considered the Italian national pastime).  When a peasant heard the Aragonese tax collector was in the area, he dismantled his house.  As soon as the tax collector moved on to another village, he reconstructed it.  The local duke caught on and, as punishment, prohibited the use of mortar in peasant homes.

In 1797, a local uprising chased the Aragonese duke out of the area.  Almost immediately, new Trulli houses were built using mortar.  It’s easy to date the construction of a Trulli by noting whether the walls have mortar or not.

Over the centuries, Trulli houses became more sophisticated, growing from one-room huts to multi-room manors.  Still the basic concept remained…one stone cone over each room of the house.

The conical roofs are not large.  The simple engineering design will not support anything too grand.  Carol and Roger stayed in a B&B that was a multi-room house made up of several Trulli.

From our bedroom, this is what the inside of the cone looked like.

The room itself didn’t look too different from any other round bedroom you might find…though it tended to be cold and dank at night.

Those of you who have seen the “Village des Bories” in Gordes, France, might think them very similar to Trulli.  There are several differences, however.  Bories can be round or rectangular, while Trulli are always round.  Larger Bories had multiple rooms under the same roof, while Trulli always have one room per cone.

Bories have a hole in the roof that serves as a chimney, while Trulli have a plug in the center of their roofs.  Each mason who built a Trulli (as the Trulli became more sophisticated, professional masons replaced peasant farmers as the builders) put his signature-shaped plug in the roof.  Experts can therefore tell by looking at the roof ornament which family of masons built which houses and the approximate date each was constructed.

There is even a whole city in Puglia built of Trulli.  The city is Alberobello, and it is a UNESCO World Hertiage Site.  Alberobello has…

…Trulli resort hotels…

…a Trulli Church…

…and, as any self-respecting Italian town would have, a gelateria…this one inside a two-scoop Trulli.

This is Trulli gelato.

The Colors of Otranto

As Carol and Roger continued their bike tour of southern Italy, they passed from Calabria into Puglia.

Puglia is the “heel” of the Italian boot.

All along both the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic, beachfront communities glowed white in the sun and sand.  Carol ran into a minor bike problem, and we had to stop for a day to get repairs.

The placed we stopped was Otranto, a small city on the Adriatic that grew around a Spanish fortress built to protect its citizens from Turkish invasion. 

The town is a mix of Spanish and Greek styles. 

Walking around the old city, you get overwhelmed by the color white.  

So much so, that any bit of color really stands out.  




We thought you might enjoy the color contrasts.

And for the sixth time in this year’s travels, Carol got to wade in a different ocean or sea.

Hannibal’s Fortress

It feels good to be back in the saddle again.  Carol and Roger are riding along the south coast of Calabria.

Calabria is the southern-most part of the Italian peninsula.  The “toe” of the boot.

We started just outside the hectic city of Reggio Calabria and rode to Crotone….right along the Ionian Sea all the way.

Calabria is one of the poorest parts of Italy.  People make their livings by fishing…

 …or farming.

Much of the citrus Italians eat…oranges and lemons…come from Calabria.

The big energy companies have invested heavily in windmills that follow the shoreline to catch the sea breezes.

Calabria is supposed to be sunny virtually all year.  Our luck didn’t hold, but we were rewarded with a beautiful rainbow.

The highlight of our ride along the sole of the boot was the Fortress at Capo Rizzuto.

Legend has it that this was the place where Calypso hypnotized Odysseus and held him hostage for five years before he convinced Zeus to free him from the spell.  The fortress contains remnants of a wall built in the ancient Greek style.

The fortress itself was built by Hannibal, the great Carthaginian general during the Second Punic War, 218 to 202 BC.

After crossing the Alps with his elephants, he defeated the Roman army just south of the River Po.  Instead of driving toward Rome, Hannibal faked right and went left…marching down the Adriatic coast into Puglia (the “heel” of the Italian boot) and on to Calabria.  Fearing the Roman army would  at attack his rear, he built this fortress in 208 BC.

Over the centuries, the fortress slowly fell into disrepair, until 1494.  By this point, Calabria was ruled by the Spanish as part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilys.  King Ferdinand, fearing invasion by the Ottoman Turks, built a series of forts along the Ionian and Southern Adriatic coasts, one very 5-15km.  Right around Capo Rizzuto, there were seven forts built on islands.  The other six island forts sank into the sea.  Only this one remains.

The towers apparently prevented the Turks from staging a full-fledged invasion.  

Instead, the Turks settled for a series of raids up and down the coast.  The worst was in Otranto on the Adriatic…where 800 civilians were butchered in one day when they refused to give up their Christian faith and convert to Islam.