Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

Good to hear from you. I have pretty much the same lighting situation. A lot of the light I get is reflected off the windows of buildings across the street, where the blinds are mostly closed all the time. Think my east-northeast exposure is supposed to be good for painters.

Nothing to feel remiss about. Just wanted to stay in touch & emphasize that all cameos/intaglios are welcome here.

 

Oh, I forgot... I have some photos on file that I've taken earlier.

I used to use this as my avatar photo here. It's made of a sort of milk glass. The brown part is not dirt, it was part of the original.



@Bronwen do you have any ideas on who this is?

 

I like it very much. Have not actually seen this particular piece before, even though clearly was mass produced. Look closely, that's not a lock of hair at the forehead, it's a crescent moon, so we know the lady is Diana. The so-called Diana of Versailles may be the inspiration.

 

The one on the left is made of lava, and the one on the right is celluloid. They are both fairly large, or at least not tiny.

 

Thanks! I always thought it was a male, for some reason. What you said makes sense.

 

This one is a little blurry... it's some sort of shell, I think, not angel skin coral. But I could be wrong.

This is all for now.

 

Good for you not to mistake it for coral. At least half the cameos on eBay described as angel skin coral are really conch shell. Heck, a lot of the cameos I see described as angel skin coral by sellers at antique jewellery shows are really conch shell. Most are not open to being told any different. When I have the opportunity, I refer them here. And of course, when I have the opportunity, I show one of mine.

 

The lava piece is very well done & looks like it could be Venus, although would want to see from more angles to be sure.

The Celluloid piece is really very interesting & would probably get a good price from a Celluloid collector. She is revealed as not ivory, if in no other way, by the 'grain' running in one direction on the figure and another on the background. She has been made in 2 pieces; many Celluloid pieces would qualify as repoussée. The modeling for the mold was excellent.

I love Celluloid & have bought a number of vintage little Celluloid jewellery boxes to stash things in. One has a shell cameo on the top.

 

This is exactly the sort of touch that tends to be water soluble, making cleaning these pieces essentially impossible without leaving them completely monochromatic. We have seen it on the piece Phaik presented.

 

I thought it would be best not to clean that one, and I've never tried. I do want to try some of the method you described on shell cameos, though.

 

Presenting a new member of the family, yet another white bearded man. Bought this thinking it was very interesting & unusual, but, going by seller's photos, also thinking it was glass, maybe pâte sur pâte. This was one of those rare times when it is nice to be wrong about something. He is stone, I estimate from c. 1780 - 1820.

 

Oops, somehow this completely slipped by me. (Not somehow; I frequently overlook all sorts of things on computer screens.) Yes, first is ivory, second is Celluloid.

 

GGRRREAAT!!!

 

Thanks kyratango. Always appreciate having my judgment backed up, especially by others who know cameos. Not a thrift store price, well below true value. Other great thing is that he is quite wearable (a pendant), wearing him now.

 

What a fabulous piece! Is the red paint?

 

Thank you. No, the red, both the layer used for the skin tone & the speckled inclusions in the background layer, are all natural to the stone. Unlike the agate that became usual by the start of the Victorian era, earlier gem engravers & lapidary artists often made use of stones that had some character of their own.

To my mind, the Miseroni family & their workshop did the greatest work ever when it comes to bringing out the potential in usual stones. If you want to be wowed, scroll through this search of the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. All those pieces that look like glass are rock crystal, and the cameos & other little sculptures... Well, you'll just have to see.

 

For more eye candy, see the Kunsthistorisches Museum's holdings of cameos by Alessandro Masnago.

 

An eye feast!! Thank you for the links

 

I don't purposely collect cameos, though I have come across a few over the years. I have trouble knowing when they are real, and maybe I can post some of the ones I wonder about later, but this one I'm pretty certain to be a real shell cameo. Though I've seen many women in profile, the subject matter of this one was quite a surprise to me. Sorry I didn't clean it first. Any info would be great, including who would have made it, and especially who would have worn such a thing?

 

Helmet shell cameo. Have seen scenes of this type now & then, but either weren't done that much or weren't that popular as tourist souvenirs, which is what this was, proudly worn on the bosom to show one & all that the lady had been to Italy & probably other major cultural centers of Europe. The phrase 'Grand Tour' has come to be used very loosely, it was more likely to have been a Cook's Tour by this time (clasp & hinge place in 20th century), but if you had the means & pretended to culture & learning, you went.

Think we have an Italian peasant taking a break from the fields or the road to have a smoke & a squirt or 3 from his wine skin.

He's not what you would call 'museum quality' - a lot of things that are called that aren't either - but he has some nice touches, a lot of character, & I like him.