Bidspirit auction | A Collection of Five Sterling

A Collection of Five Sterling Silver Thimbles including a Simons Bros. Nursery Rhyme Example - A collection of five sterling silver thimbles featuring various decorative motifs and origins. One American thimble by Simons Bros. Co. depicts the Hey Diddle Diddle nursery rhyme with an embossed scene of a cow jumping over a crescent moon, a cat with a fiddle, and a dog. The band is inscribed THE COW JUMPED OVER THE MOON and is stamped with the size number 4. An impressed mark on the interior crown shows a central shield with an S surrounded by the letters SIMONS. A Mexican sterling silver thimble of tapered form is decorated with applied wire filigree scrolls and set with eleven turquoise cabochons. The top features a cross-hatched grid. Characters reading MADE IN MEXICO and CO-925 are stamped on the interior rim. Another Mexican sterling silver thimble features high-relief floral scrolls and fleur-de-lis designs ending in a scalloped rim, with a circular mark on the interior crown reading MEXICO 925. A fourth thimble features traditional honeycomb knurling and an embossed Greek key or meander pattern at the base, stamped with a size 5. The final thimble has honeycomb knurling and a decorative band with embossed foliate scrolls; no hallmarks are visible on this piece. Weight: 0.593 ozt. The Simons Bros. thimble shows significant surface wear and softening of the embossed details from use and cleaning (photos 4 and 5). The turquoise thimble exhibits heavy oxidation and tarnish throughout the silver body (photos 8 and 9). The remaining thimbles show light to moderate surface scratches and tarnish in recessed decorative areas (photo 1). All turquoise stones appear intact. The interiors of the pieces show varying degrees of oxidation and minor surface deposits (photos 7, 10, 12, and 14).