Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

That's interesting. I would have said plastic/resin, for the same reasons you gave. But I didn't realize that the emulation of shell colors was getting so good!

 

One is shell; the other, not.

 

#1 is not
#2 is shell

 

Did you decide by comparing the two? Or because you have seen one of them at least once before?

 

Only by comparing the two, I'm not sure I'd be able to tell for #1 if seing only it...
Now you make me doubt... could #1 be a very dirty shell carving
You are the Guru for id cameos only from pics
If only I could "taste" them!

 

@Bronwen - check out what this guy finds about 8 minutes in. The camera may be reversing things, but if not .... this guy is a junk dealer and what he found is for sale.

 

It is not only the color that has been getting more realistic. The modern mold making materials allow for a very accurate impression to be taken of an actual cameo, & the flexibility of the molds allows the piece to be removed, even with a bit of undercutting. It's getting scary out there.

 

It's quite a production. I do see these tavern scenes from time to time. Fortunately they do not call to me, as the prices are, understandably, always high.

 

It's a nice little piece, & he mentions it is marked. We can't see where he indicates, but possible it is sterling rather than Italian 800 silver. Vertically mounted pins often indicate a setting from the earlier Victorian period. Always the possibility that pin had to be relocated when replaced, or that this cameo is not what was originally in the mount, but from what we can see, no reason to think either is true. I'm not sure how the young lady plays her kithara while holding a scarf in her left hand.

Funny that this guy who starts off looking a knives leaves being most happy with the cameo. He shows us at length his time with all the little metal bits & tells us what he pays. Can understand if seller of cameo did not want to be on camera, but he does not even tell us whether he had to look through a lot of stuff to find the brooch, nor how much he paid & how much he expects to be able to sell it for. He just produces it, like a magic trick, out of his closed hand.

 

Maybe I should have made it another pop quiz. Think I created enough anxiety for one week.

Today thought to use my USB microscope to see if I could settle a disagreement between myself & the cameo collecting friend who gave me this cameo. I have shown it here before, and explained that, while I see what it is about it that convinces her it is resin, I have always believed it to be shell.


The features she feels are inconsistent with shell are: the very squared off edge, most visible around the top where the mount does not hide it; the flat appearance of the entire piece & the level bezel that does not rise & fall to follow the edge; the white patch on the front, which is even more visible on the back.

My argument was that, even if not typical, none of these is impossible with natural shell, that the mount does not seem to have been made for the cameo, that I can feel a very slight curve to the back the eye cannot really pick up, & that the material is not smooth enough for resin.

Here are a couple of the microscope photos I took today (she's dirtier than I thought!):





And, the conclusion is...?

 

He paid a whopping dollar for her. All the baggies were a buck. She could either be a silver or a gold mount; odds are a picker like him wouldn't glom gold-filled.

 

Squared off edge? do you mean the area at the 2 o'clock position where it was too close to the end of the hair as it would cause damage to the hair and it wasn't rounded off like the rest of the edge.

 

In person it's actually more conspicuous in the 10 - 12 o'clock area, where the edge of the cameo is higher than the edge of the bezel, but you can see it a bit also in the area you point out. It doesn't taper down to a very thin edge, which is more common. By 'squared off' I mean that the edges are perpendicular to the table, as you would generally see in a molded piece. The cameo is held securely, but mount is not customized to it; at 10 - 12 cameo doesn't sit down all the way & cannot be pushed back. It's as though the bezel is just a tad too small, so cameo has to sit at a slight angle. Possible the squaring off is from grinding down to size.

 

Would she have been alone in a bag? Hate to imagine her knocking around with a bunch of other oddments. He was carrying her in his hand, sans bag. For a buck, I probably would have told seller that I just wanted the cameo, the rest could stay to be sold again. I have done this now & then with an eBay purchase.

 

Or scrapped out the setting; it didn't look like anything to cry about and might well have been a marriage.

 

Shell --

 

Resin.

 

Are there people who collect really badly carved/molded cameos? Because if it weren't for the starting price, I would want this FishHead/LlamaFace Woman:

 

Funny -- I like the design of it, so would probably buy it despite the cameo. Not for a high price, though!