Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

Well she does have an .800 silver frame.(sigh) I once paid $30 for one with lousy carving ... but the setting was 14k.

This one would have benefited from lousier photos, poor girl.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/ANTIQUE-14...m=401422637408&_trksid=p2047675.c100010.m2109

 

What she needs most is a bath; she'd be passable if clean. Unusual setting. There's an indentation on the pin stem that could be the French eagle head mark. Seller, who turns up with a cameo regularly, may not have tested for 18K.

Lousy carving in good settings may as well be evicted & the gold scrapped. The sad things is, because of the astronomical price of gold, some really beautiful pieces are being put out of their homes & sometimes damaged in the process.

 

Seller says: 'I leave cameos dirty as they photograph so well that way and you can really see the details. I can ship it clean-just ask me.' There's a difference between leaving a little grunge in the crevices to add some definition for the camera & leaving so much that it distorts the features & makes the cameo look like something you wouldn't want to touch.

 

This has no right to live:



A new 14K ring.

 

It's not even so bad it's good. It's just bad. That's one I'd melt in a heartbeat.

 

It's a stark example of my reminder that a good quality setting does not guarantee a good quality cameo.

 

The converse too; I've seen good stuff in junk settings. Jewelers have done some WEIRD stuff over the years, especially Asian ones, but you never know.

 

Absolutely. Since my interest is cameos, not settings, I love those & unset ones, sometimes great pieces at bargain prices. Of course, I'm looking at them with the eye of a collector, not a reseller.

 

So, is there a cameo category called "Woman with Thick Neck"?

If not, there ought to be.

 

What's really needed is a category for figure with neck growing out of shoulder. If you look closely, a lot of cameo busts do not look anatomically correct.

 

Oh yes, many many anatomical oddities. And while I understand how a carving can take a bad turn, it's the molded ones where I go, "well, you just quit caring some time ago."

 

I just found one that's not odd at all. Or rather it's odd, but not because it's badly done. I figured Bronwen would want to see this. Not my style, but interesting:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Antique-Vi...rentrq:de48f2bd1670abd98fc79eaffffdd861|iid:1

 

It is interesting. If you search for 'blackamoor stickpin' you will see similar pieces, but using one as part of a penannular brooch is definitely different. It's a whole genre some people are very taken with.

 

I'm going to need more pop quizzes before I buy any cameos because I would have definitely guessed that one (the one @evelyb30 linked to) was molded, not carved.

 

Part of it is having looked at enough stuff to know, for example, that these do not turn up in artificial materials. It is very finely worked coral.

 

Just the fact that it's blackamoor is enough to make you look twice. Seeing one of those in coral has to be fairly unusual.

 

Wow, this *is* very interesting. Thanks for finding and posting it.

 

Yes. But it's what we're seeing more & more: resin that is a very good match for the color of shell. A back that is covered over when it doesn't need to be - rings are an exception - should always make you look extra hard, because it is so often an indicator that if you could see the back you would have no illusions about the material. Bezels on helmet shell pieces generally have to rise & fall to follow the contours of the shell. As with most hardstone pieces, resin cameos can sit in a bezel that is level all the way around, like this one.