Featured Help with this beautiful cameo brooch! Signature on the back?

Bought this nice big cameo brooch for $20. To me it does not look like gold but the cameo is beautiful in great condition. It appears the cameo portion is marked with a signature but the metal frame is not. I am thinking it may be brass but am not sure. The color is too dark IMO to be gold of sorts. Is this a unique shape for a cameo brooch? How old is this piece? What does the marking mean? Seeking any info so any help is greatly appreciated!

 

that's a nice one....i like the unusual shape !

 

Can't wait for @Bronwen to step in on this one......could that siggy be lower case 'rh'??? NIIIICE!!!!

 

mid to late 1800's
I don't think the siggy will help with date or maker....as it could have been put there anytime.

 

Very interesting and very nicely cut. Must have been quite avant garde in its time, which is early 20th century. The cutter was influenced by the art nouveau style for his lady, but, in abandoning the conventional cameo oval shape in favor of the shield shape of a lobe of the helmet shell sawn off without then rounding down the point, he was experimenting in the direction of deco. The cutter's acid-etched initials are another innovation of the time. Afraid they do not mean anything to me.



The jeweller who set the cameo, by contrast, was behind the times, which seems generally to have been the case in Italy at the time, at least when it came to this sort of thing. It may have been a deliberate choice, the intention being to give the impression the piece was older than it was. I have seen many others from this period I have suspected of having findings that were purposely anachronistic.

 

Those earlier hinges and clasps can be found on some other southern European jewellery of the period as well. I have seen them on Italian and Spanish pieces not related to cameos or historic themes.

 

Yes, I have some pieces of jewelry with hooked clasps that are much newer than the 19th century. Hinges, too, but not as many.

 

Very interesting! I was thinking the cameo was even newer than that, but now have learned... again!

 

well not being an expert , i guess the pin and grab could be newer than it seems.

 

Oh, I thought the surround was newer than that, thanks!

 

I, too, would have guessed the cameo was newer than early 20th century, despite the C-clasp. The ski-slope nose and jutting chin seems popular even now. Good thing I didn't embarrass myself by making a guess before Bronwen stepped in, LOL!

I love the leaves around the base of the figure... much better than the usual plethora of fakey-looking flowers, IMHO.

 

And I three.

 

The difference between the artisanal jewellers of a place like Naples and the sophisticated houses of Rome and other capital cities. Some Greek souvenir brooches from as late as the 1940s were made with the trombone clasps long out of use elsewhere.

Like a patent, hinges, clasps, etc., give a terminus post quem, the point in time after which a piece has to have been made. So do hairstyles. Nothing prevents their being made any time later.

Ah, but someone knocking out cameos in the 1950s would not have given her that slightly zaftig, very womanly chin. And the nose is nothing like as extreme as was seen later.

The technique of leaving a very fine layer of white on the background, instead of clearing it all right down to the brown, and then incising some of the design into it is also characteristic of this period. This cutter has done an especially fine job of using light & shadow to create a much greater illusion of depth than the shell affords in reality.

 

In some parts of Europe trombone clasps were even used in the 60s. In Germany for instance they were used on quality costume brooches.