Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1916 — HAPPENINGS IN THE BIG CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HAPPENINGS IN THE BIG CITIES

War Brings Italian Cameo Cutters to New York

NEW YORK. —Previous to August of 1914 one could count all the cameo cutters in New York on the fingers of one hand. About all the cameos came from Torre del Greco and Santa Lucia, the two great cameo towns of

Italy. Today there are in New York city—in the Bronx Italian colony —50 or 60 men whose trade it is to cut “landscapes or heads” upon shells. All of these men work at home In the old-world style, a small bench and chair, four or five engraving tools, a few files and some polishing brushes making up the necessary parapher-. nalia, except for the pencil-like sticks, or “holders,” upon which the cameos-to-be are cemented with a brownish

sealing wax. With this slmple-'equlp-ment and the proper know-how which he has acquired by years of apprenticeship on the other side, the average cameo cutter can make from $6 to 310 a day. This, compared with the European wage of from 3 to 15 francs a day, explains somewhat New York’s latest artist colony. - As one of them, who Cuts shells by day and is learning English at the nearby night school, puts it: “Cameo cutting in this country is a good trade. Here you are paid for what you can do. Over there you must have gray hair before they think you are good for anything.” The cameo cutter who can produce a really good “Three Graces” or a chariot bearing aloft a company of angels has something to be proud of. These particular groups are the hardest of all the usual designs which the stock cutter is called upon to execute. Just dow there is no market for cam ops adorned with masculine heads, be they of Socrates or Apollo. Scenes in the antique Greek style also are out of vogue. “They only wanta landscapes and nlca ladies’ heads, ’ says the cutter.