Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

They are indeed.

 

I have plenty of vintage paper here. I've used pages from worthless old books in projects before and keep a supply on hand.

In the meantime, do you see what I see? Cornucopia? Torch? On a string?

 

Sorry, no luck finding the one I saw yesterday.
And in viewing your most recent photo, the scene may have been different after all...

 

Found it. This was the one I saw... different from yours @Jivvy, sorry! But perhaps your babes are doing the same thing?

 

give me what you took or i'll clobber you with this thing?
really great photos Jivvy!

 

My guess is that it is a quiver of arrows. There are lots of scenes of cupids/geniuses playing at hunting or going bird's nesting.

 

This one has more in common with other images I have put up of carousing putti. This trio is not quite so raucus, more enjoying fruits of the autumn harvest.

 

While I cannot get a definitive picture, I think the figure on the right simply has his hand clutched to his breast. While it looks like he is holding something dark (fish/bird/flower), the dark bit really seems to be "shadowing" on that pec -- he's heavily shadowed on that side of his body.

And there's definitely nothing cut into the glass (other than his hand) -- the dark bit is all in the paint.

 

Thanks for the heads up!

 

If it was mine, as the paint on reverse is ruined and does seem to have been monochrome, I'd wash out all the remaining, and paint the hollow decor with white matte acrylic paint, to make it look like a sulphide. Then a dark background paper, matte too, dark blue or purple or black, even a tan wrapping paper (will look like a shell cameo!). Replace the original paperback to be seen from the back, et voilà!

 

I was thinking this is a good candidate for kyratisation.

 

Me too

 

It's a shame you don't have a nice piece oj mother of pearl for the background

 

@Jivvy something like that for the effect

 

Said friend gave me his contact at the Hermitage. Lena's field is classical gems & impressions of them, not modern engraved gems, so the degree to which she has taken an interest in trying to discover more about the origins of my little cameo has (pleasantly) stunned me.

Lena thought to check on what Olenin's grave marker looks like and found a photo that gives a tantalizing hint that the relief portrait there may look like the cameo. She made a special trip to take better photos:

Today had another message from Lena that is very exciting. In part:

I managed to hit on a solution of the "wrong" date of Olenin's birth which is indicated on your cameo.

The thing is that the date, which is specified everywhere including his tombstone, is taken from his record of service - November 21, 1763.

However, Olenin himself in several documents named his birth date - November 21, 1764, which exactly coincides with the date on your cameo.

The "official" date is that arisen because of a feeling of obligation to keep appearances since there is an opinion according to which Matvei Kashtalinsky was Alexey Olenin's father.

The presence on the cameo of the "unofficial" date of birth, which Olenin considered to be correct himself, makes it possible to make a supposition that this cameo was ordered by a person close to Olenin's family, might be a close friend or one of his children. By the way, the great-grandson of Olenin died in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942, who knows what he had on him, when he got there what happened to these things?)

From a funny little cameo, it has now become very interesting indeed!

 

Very cool!

 

Curiouser and curiouser as they say.

I ran into an intaglio listed on UK Ebay yesterday. It's not for me, but at least it's not jane average profile face.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Antique-Je...AHORSES-Wife-of-Neptune-Poseidon/312420264154

 

Wow, great information! And how gracious of Lena to investigate this so thoroughly.

 

This sort of thing tickles me at least as much as picking up for a bargain price a piece that most other people would also recognize as being of value. Lena told me that part of what she loves about her field is that there is a story behind every piece. That has certainly turned out to be the case here, more than anyone guessed at the start. It is also another example of my observation that when there's a discrepancy, in this case the birth date, there is something more to know.