This piece is a bit atypical for me, but the flowers and fitted box did me in.
Victorian silver gilt micro mosaic cross in a fitted Wheatley & Son of Carlisle box. Measures 8cmx5.25cm. Wear to back gilding and several missing tesserae.
And now for the trip down the rabbit hole…
Thomas Wheatley moved to Carlisle, on the border with Scotland in the 1820s, having already established himself as a well-regarded silversmith in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In the 1850s, Thomas’ son, a doctor at the British Naval Base in Porto, Portugal, moved back to Carlisle to assume the helm of his father’s business. He expanded the offerings from silver into jewellery, and took on a business partner, before moving to Italy, where he sources antiquities and jewellery for the business back home - likely where this cross was discovered! Upon return to Carlisle, he found the business affairs mismanaged, and was forced to close its doors in 1869. After being bailed out by the father of his well to do wife (yikes), the family uprooted to Northern Mexico where he switched gears once again and became a “gentleman silver miner.”
TLDR - Chonker cross, pretty flowers, fancy box, fun provenance