Who we are

since 1965

Company history

Since 1965 , the year Condito Giovanni s.r.l. was founded, the passion for working with Coral and Cameo has been handed down in the family. The penetration into international markets and the continuous contact with operators from other continents, has allowed with the passing of the years a diversification of products that today includes pearls from the Far East along with turquoise and other semi-precious stones. The evolution of the business over the years has led Condito Giovanni s.r.l. to place “customer focus” at the center of its strategy. Therefore, a continuous search for pearls and precious stones on the production sites was developed in order to meet the demand with quality and competitiveness.

At the same time, a constant commitment was developed to continue and innovate the Torre del Greco tradition related to the processing of Coral and Cameo. The enhancement of coral, an expression of made in Italy, and the search for pearls and other exclusive valuables represent the route that Condito Giovanni s.r.l. follows to increase its brand on international markets.

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Materials

Coral

The origin of coral has been shrouded in legend for centuries. Pliny the Elder in the “Naturalis historia” recognized coral as having a mythical origin; the blood that continued to drip from the severed head of the gorgon Medusa was transformed into coral. Its bright red color, marine origin, and ambiguous nature generated great attraction among the Mediterranean peoples who thus began to work it and use it as a precious ornament.
As early as the 1400s, Torre del Greco devoted itself to coral fishing, and Torre del Greco’s fishermen, strengthened by their centuries of experience, went as far as the African coast with their coral. In 1805, processing was added to coral fishing, thanks to Ferdinand IV of Bourbon, who granted a license to open the first coral production factory in Torre del Greco. Today coral worked in Torre del Greco, is exported all over the world especially to the Far East. There are different types with various shades of color ranging from red to white, although most of the coral we process is ” corallium rubrum,” the scientific name for red coral fished in the Mediterranean Sea The most valuable are the dark red Moorish, and the one with a pale, delicate pink color known as “angel skin”. The precious corals that we process do not come from coral reefs, these are the so-called ” reef corals” which are totally preserved and their fishing is completely prohibited. Our corals come from the Mediterranean Sea and are fished at depths greater than fifty meters, and their harvesting is regulated by a set of rules defined internationally by the GFCM-FAO (General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean) to ensure sustainability.

Cameo

The cammeo or cameo is a piece of jewelry made through the engraving of a layered stone or shell, particularly Cypraecassis rufa, Cassis madascarensis and Cassis cornuta as these shells of the Cassis family have a surface consisting of two distinct layers of color, which allows the relief figure to be clearly isolated from the background. To this day, cameo carving is still done by hand. The first stage of the workmanship is the selection of the shell suitable for engraving. Next comes the bursting, that is, the cutting of the most convex part of the shell, the “cup”; then we proceed to the marking and shaping of the cut piece: inside the cup we trace the contours of the cameos that we want to make and eliminate, by cutting them, the superfluous parts. Finally, we move on to aggarbatura, which involves giving the piece the desired shape (usually oval or round) using a special grinding wheel. At this point the obtained pieces are fixed on a wooden spindle with hot mastic composed of Greek pitch, wax and scagliola. After this operation, the work proceeds to scaling, that is, the abrasion of the outermost part of the shell so as to leave on the surface the clear layer to be engraved. The work then passes to the engraver, who draws on the surface the subject to be reproduced.

Turquoise

The Turquoise is a blue-green mineral belonging to the triclinic system. Always opaque or barely translucent this gemstone may show a uniform blue color or brown or black limonite dendritic veins. Very rare in transparent crystals,it is always found in nodules or reniform microcrystalline masses or in thin veins within the embedded rocks.Its porosity causes easy alterations to the original color for this reason impregnation treatments are sometimes carried out for protective purposes. Turquoise is a mineral of secondary genesis and is formed as a result of the circulation of mineralizing solutions within sedimentary rocks especially sandstone or volcanic rocks. It is a stone that does not exhibit excessive shear strength-its hardness index is about 6 on the Mohs scale-so it lends itself to being worked with the same tools as coral processing. This has allowed us to combine turquoise processing with coral manufacture.

Pearls

A pearl is a spherical structure consisting of calcium carbonate in crystalline form. To create pearls with special shapes, when the pearl is extracted from the oyster, a fragment of mother-of-pearl with the chosen shape is inserted, which the oyster will cover with successive layers of mother-of-pearl. The result is that, after years of waiting, the pearl that is born has the enlarged shape of the initial fragment. The most common color in pearls is white, but pink, cream, yellow, gray and black pearls can also be found. After harvesting each pearl is carefully selected according to the following characteristics: size ,shape, color, purity, brightness There are two categories of pearls: freshwater pearls and saltwater pearls. As the word itself says, freshwater pearls are cultured in lakes and rivers, while the others come from the ocean and very often from lagoons. The three categories of saltwater pearls are Akoya known as Japanese pearls, Tahitian pearls, and the very expensive South Sea pearls known as Australian pearls.
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