Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

Not my favorite subject, but my cat thinks spiders make good toys.

 

Have known more than one person who developed cellulitis after a spider bite. Horrible condition, difficult to treat. Don't know which species is the culprit, but something you might find in your house. Kitties are probably safe, unless they tangle with a dangerous one & it gets them on the nose.

 

Hi,
As frightened as I am about spiders. I love that cameo!!!!!! I saw a wonderful large (6 inches) long legged spider that was Platinum with 30 some diamonds on his legs and two large emerald for eyes and six ruby fangs. Loved the pin but at 90 thousand a little too rich for me.
greg

 

They provide a good design for some beautiful jewels. The one I have liked the most was a large spider shoulder brooch with an abdomen made of a huge baroque pearl. I'm also fond of crabs as a design motif &, of course, turtles.

Arachne. Note the spider has a face.

 

Trust me when I say you do not want to be bitten by a brown recluse spider. I went to the doctor one day because of an over-night inflamed (ugly red) "ulcer" (hole/trough) on the back of my hand which had not been there when I went to sleep the night before. The doctor immediately diagnosed the bite as a "brown recluse bite."

The good part was that the doctor told me that even though I was asleep (or halfway asleep) I must have felt "something" and must have quickly brushed the spider off my hand. The doctor treated the wound and gave me a shot and also a prescription for antibiotic pills.

I had never had any spider bites before (even as a child playing outdoors all the time) nor have I had any spider bites since.

 

Yep, brown recluse, that's the one. Although the biters are not so reclusive as all that. Brown extroverts, more like it. Good you got treatment right away & had a doc who knew what he was looking at. The cell damage just spreads otherwise.

 

amazing!! but I truly get the heebee-jeebees just looking at it!! *shudder*

 

New acquisition:



which makes a nice companion piece to this one, shown previously:



They are by the same hand, another cameo cutter whose signed pieces turn up all time and about whom absolutely nothing can be found. A known unknown.

 

Sometimes I get cameos in packaging that is almost as interesting as the cameo itself. The one shown above crossed the Pond safely in this little Band-Aid tin:



The lid was jammed down so far, with some of the cushioning material from the inside caught at a couple of edges, it took me about 15 minutes to get it open. It is less than an inch deep, so gives very little space to get a grip on both parts. Finally resorted to using a pocket bottle opener to work it open bit by bit, prying in one spot, then next to that, and so on.

 

It looks like it's marked six shillings - vintage British first-aid tin!

 

Yes, I was surprised. At first, because 'sticking plaster' seems to the the British generic for these things, I had always assumed the Band-Aid brand was not known there, so I thought it was an old American tin that had found its way back home, but the price & the fine print (Gt. Britain Limited/ Slough & Gargravi) tell a different story.

 

Over here it's a collectible!

 

I had that thought too. I imagine over there there are still many around. I know as a child I thought the old metal Band-Aid boxes were the most wonderful things for keeping little treasures in.

Someone else was keeping little things in it. Although the cameo is no longer in it, it is not empty. Inside were also: something that looks like the world's tiniest washer; a headless screw that is also tiny, but still too large to go with the washer; and what looks to be a very small tool tip made to be interchangeable with others in a holder, which is now very sharply pointed & may be broken at that end. My best guess is watch maker's stuff.

Once got a box in which I could hear something rattling around & thought uh-oh. Turned out not to be a broken cameo; sender had somehow managed to drop a calligraphy pen nib in.

 

Judging by the design, this one is the same era:



http://www.ebay.com/itm/254019571760

How appropriate they had offices in Chicago, Ill.!

 

You have to love vintage tins. My batch of Russian Tea Cakes just went into an old 60s fruitcake box.

 

What the heck is on his head?

 

A dragon. This is Achilles. If you go here:

http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/gems/tassie/default.htm

and enter the number 9198, you will see a couple of plaster impressions of engraved gems with this image. Then, if you click on View Text, you can read what the catalogue says about them. You can enlarge the pages just by clicking on them.

 

Follow up. Taking a good look at the plaster impressions, have to guess the engraver of this one was not working from a good source. A poor impression, a bad line drawing, another cameo that has the same mistake? He has put sort of a knob on the dragon's back, whereas in the original that point is the thick joint of the wing, the elbow.