A SeaWitch Space

Hello everyone.  I just had to come up for air and say hello.  My physical therapy is going well and am now walking with my mother's antique shillelagh. I know she is smiling down at me as I walk with it.   This entire healing process has been interesting, tough and with little successes.  I am amazed when I look at my knee and realize that 20 days ago I had a total knee replacement and am now walking around and will start off site PT next week.  Just waiting for my doc to give me the "all clear" to get in the pool again.   So let me thank everyone for their prayers of healing and the good energies that keep me moving.  You have been marvelous.  

While visiting facebook pages, I come across this faboosh seawitchy space.  I love everything about it.  

A pair of galvanized laundry tubs with wood table applied and then filled with shells, shells and more shells.  Don't you just love the vision of this designer?  Wishing many blessings to you and those you love.  Sea Witch

White Shell Wednesday or a dress fit for a

Sea Captain's daughter, a mermaid or perhaps even a Sea Witch!

Part of the exhibit of "ladies" items at the Maritime Museum in Salem, MA. This sea shell encrusted dress looks like an offering straight from Project Runway and their found objects challenge. This seemingly size 14 beauty is encrusted with cowries, periwinkles and tiny clam shells all resembling bead work. I especially like the use of row after row of cowrie shells on the sleeves giving it the illusion of ruched silk. This really is the ultimate Sailor's Valentine and I can share that this "Sea Witch" was dying to try this on no matter what the weight of this dress felt like.

Have a lovely White Wednesday and just a reminder that we turn our clocks back this Sunday, November 1st.

Shell Cameos

I adore cameos. They are miniature works of art that transforms the wearer in to a living art gallery. The art of cameo carving has been traced as far back as the second and first centuries B.C., to the ancient Greco-Roman empires, where cameos enjoyed a golden age. Stone, shell, lava, Bakelite, resin plastics and wood, they can be carved in relief, intaglio or molded. Napoleon was so taken by the beauty of cameos that he not only wore and collected them, he also started a school in Paris to train young carvers. His wife’s coronation crown was studded with cameos.

Extraordinary antique french cameo headpiece (1860s.)

Cameo jewelry was incredibly popular during the Victorian era, approximately 1837 - 1901. As one of Queen Elizabeth's favorite types of jewelry, the popularity of the cameo naturally coincides with her reign. This era is also when the profile, rather than other designs became the most popular style for cameos.

This lovely classic cameo is beautifully carved right down to the details of her curls and tendrils, the roses in her hair and the pearls at her neck. Circa 1900s (I Need This, Antiques - $140.00)

This deep relief, angel skin cameo is also highly detailed with grapes and grape leaves in her hair and a strand of pearls at her neck. Angel skin is not a shell but a pale pink coral and is one of the most sought after most expensive shell cameo types.


High relief, this angel skin cameo has the palest of pink backgrounds. Circa 1900s (I Need This, Antiques - $160.00)

Beautifully carved head of Athena showcases her helmet and plume and flowing tresses. Lots of carved details on the helmet. Vibrant background enhances the pure white of the shell. Interesting woven wire bezel. A lovely, well executed cameo. Circa 1900s (I Need This, Antiques - $125.00)

I have two cameos that I wear often, one belonged to my grandma-nana and is a traditional Rebecca at the Well theme (1890s). This was a widely popular cameo, often purchased for cash or trade from a traveling salesman across the prairies and the American West by working class men and women. Other than the wedding band a woman may own, it was the cameo to be worn at her throat that women covented. My other cameo is also a traditional Rebecca at the Well but contains two animals, a horse and a dog. Her arms wrapped around the horse as he is drinking from the well with the dog drinking at her feet. I adore this piece because it shows a tenderness towards God's creatures. Although there is a repair, it is my favorite and I wear it often.

Owned by the Sea Witch and worn often (1890s).

Cameos and cameo jewelry are treasures meant to be passed on from one generation to another. Cameos require special care and cleaning to keep them as beautiful as when first acquired and especially old cameo pieces. Shell and coral cameos in particular need a beauty regimen as they are prone to discoloration and cracking from drying as they age. To prevent the color-change and discoloration they need to be moisturized a couple of times of year with baby or mineral oil. Just apply the oil with your finger or soft-cotton swab and let it sit overnight. In the morning, wipe any remaining oil from the cameo with a soft fabric cloth--DO NOT use a paper towel. DO NOT wash the excess oil off or the moisturizing effect of the oil will be washed away also. Moisturize or rehydrate your cameos twice or year and each time after cleaning them. If your cameo needs cleaning, use a jewelry cleaner that is safe for cleaning pearls. Pearls, coral and shells are all porous materials so your cleaner must be gentle or it will destroy the cameo.

So check your jewel boxes for cameos and wear them, love them and show them off. They will always increase in value whether monetary or sentimental. (if you are interested in more information on the cameos I have shown for sale, please send me an email)

White Shell Wednesday

I'm loving this variation on White Wednesday.

Thank you, Anything Goes Here at http://thepottingshed-anythinggoeshere.blogspot.com/, for starting this white shell Wednesday.

I have been collecting shells as long as early childhood days. My first memories are of the sea shore and bringing home bits of sea shore treasures such as sea glass, shells, bottles of sand and anything else that may have looked interesting. I still have boxes of shells (and fossils and arrowheads and assorted rocks and minerals) from my childhood and seem to be ever adding to them as an adult.

These gifts from the mother ocean have provided us with a legacy of both food, medicine and currency, but also the sacred. One of my favorite shells is the bivalve - Angel Wings.

One cannot deny the existence of God our Creator and his angels as He so lovingly bestowed their existence in the shape of this lowly little clam shell. Delicate and the purest of white, I have gathered angel wing shells from the sea shores in Sanibel Island and in the Carolina's.

Wishing everyone a gentle white shell Wednesday. Sea Witch

"I must go down to the sea again...

to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yearn from a laughing fellow-rover, and quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over." I love these words by John Masefield, a man who trained for the sea life in order to break his "addiction to reading." His time aboard a ship only fueled his reading time and from this he decided to become a writer, a story-teller. I smile as a I write this because as bloggers we have all become storytellers, who knew?

My earliest memories are of water. My mother and father spent summers at Jones Beach and Cape Hatteras in the 1940-50s and when their eldest daughter was born, it was only natural that she be carried to the sea along with the picnic hamper. I remember sitting in the sand and digging holes to China, building sandcastles and decorating them with the seaweed that the tides would bring in. I would carry home sand in my shoes and pockets full of shells and sea glass. The sea shells I still have today, along with rocks and minerals and crystals and fossils and other bounty from nature, but that is for another blog. I have a photo of me all of 9 months old, sitting in the sand wearing a sun bonnet at Jones Beach...funny little black and white photo that I cannot put my hands on. Once I find it, I will upload and add to this posting.

It was 1957 and the "burbs" were calling so my folks left the city and moved to Lincoln Park, New Jersey. Dad got tired of the long, hot bumper to bumper drive to Jones Beach and decided to install an in-ground pool in our backyard. Big stuff in 1960, it was a tiny little thing (10 feet by 20 feet) but we loved it and lived in it all summer long. This family shot of the women around the pool, from left to right - "me" (eight years old and in fins--natch), my sister Barbara age 6 and my baby sister Renee, age 2 and our beautiful mother.

As a child, I discovered that a towel, tightly wrapped around my legs would not make me a mermaid, so I would have to seek other alternatives to becoming waterbound. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the only two people who met that criteria were Aquaman and Mike Nelson (Lloyd Bridges) of Sea Hunt. I devoured Aquaman comics and sat glued to the black and white Magnovox watching Mike Nelson save the day. At the conclusion of each episode, Mr. Bridges always made a public service announcement to the viewers to treat the sea kindly. A steward of the water world, he was handsome and had a tank on his back with a mouthpiece that fed you air...you became a waterbreather. Even then I knew that I must have this amazing apparatus that will let you breathe underwater.

Fast forward many years and I am a 54 year old woman with a dive certification, scuba gear, and a man who is a Padi instructor. I found my Aquaman and we both travel the Keys and the Caribbean in search of water worlds.

It's me...a siren of the sea!

Big, beautiful Southern Stingray sleeping in the white sands of a Bahamian Reef. (Canon Elph digital/Ikelite housing)

Say hello to my little friend! this 7 foot Caribbean Reef Shark followed me for about 8 minutes, coming about a foot from me. Thank goodness he looks fat and happy because I had no interest in being an underwater happy meal. (Canon Elph/Ikelite housing)

The beauty of a Grand Bahama Island reef. These are the natural colors of these corals set against brilliant turquoise blue waters. (my dad's old point and shoot underwater film camera.

Port Lucaya beach at sunset. a perfect end to a day in the water.

And so I go down to the sea whenever I can for it sustains me.