Cameo Signature Help Needed

Pyacevolu? A romanian engraver(pure imagination here)

 

At this stage, I'll easily believe "any language with an alphabet Jivvy can't comprehend" is a 100% plausible response.

 

I've been thinking the highlighted mark was a dot for an "i" ... an "i" I couldn't find. It's actually much better suited to an acute accent over the "o."

Of course, it could also be a random scratch of no importance.

 

I agree that there only seems to be two different Lamont signatures, at least as shown by the photos in this thread (I haven't looked for any others), and I, too, believe the first several sigs are the same sloppily-signing guy. However, since many carvers didn't sign their work, the existence of a third (or more?) Lamont/Lamant/whatever/ is still possible. And if he/they do exist, it could help explain the confusion around the name, I suppose.

@Bronwen I bow to your superior knowledge of cameo history re: the validity of the idea that "there was a serious attempt to revive the art as an industry" in the first half of the 19th century.

@Jivvy Pyacevolu, of course!

 

Back from the museum, had a great time, now back to the main pursuit in life, isn't it?

I may not have understand correctly what he meant to say, or his point of view in saying it. Got to read a little bit more before I had to leave, & he may have meant an attempt to revive the art as an industry in Britain.

OK @Jivvy give. What's on the front? My very first thought was that Piacevole is Italian for pleasant, pleasing. My only hardstone cameo by Michelini has additional scratches that look like an attempt to alter the name, not like random marks. One alteration was the addition of a loop below the line added to the upstroke of the h, making it look like a cursive f.

 

She's currently up for auction and I didn't want to disturb sellers or buyers by pointing her out, but hey, she is pleasant and perhaps the seller would like the eyeballs: https://www.ebay.com/itm/202678321813

I'm going to have to re-examine that second letter and see if I can make it be something else.

 

The flowers sprouting out of her head are an odd touch. These ladies are a type, but engravers seem to have tried out different arrangements of hair & ways of adorning it. She's very well executed. Her problem is that she has so many sisters.

 

When they're plain white on black, I like these ladies a lot.

Now that I'm looking at it, yes, it's possible that descender is actually a stray scratch and not a letter at all.

Further research to happen, but sleep first.

 

@Bronwen , as you mentioned in our other conversation, this could be a title/description as opposed to a sig. Either it is a consistently misread sig (in my own sig, my first name is consistently misread as a completely different name) or it is as you suggest.

She remains in the "unidentified" folder on my computer. She will not be lonely there.

 

From a UK seller who dates it to "around 1820" and doesn't even mention that it's signed. And look at the shape of the earring where it attaches to hold the cameo drop... heads of the Hydra?!
Sadly, there appears to be a few cracks, at it's "only" 9ct gold.

 

Well, I was wrong about 'working in England' but right about time period.

The main Hercules is some of the best work I have seen by 'Silz' (Schmolz). The custom box will make it hugely appealing, & people in the market for high priced cameos will notice the signature, even if seller did not. Just says 'yellow metal', I believe, maybe overlooking note re: 9 ct. And we can all sit here, smug in the knowledge that we are probably the only people in the world - apart from one other I told - who know whose signature it is. Seller may get the > $1,000 asking price. Will have to watch.

While part of the story of Hercules is how Hera sent a couple of snakes to kill him when he was a baby, & he strangled them instead, I think these are just a fashion of the time. I don't assume jewellers knew classical mythology well enough for such allusions.

Same seller has many cameos I have noticed before, including one of the most ugly:



And one I would love to have if price were as attractive as the cameo:



This one has initials on the back that look like N.G., also not noted in description.

 

My jaw dropped when I saw the front. Dude got mad skillz.

(heh)

Seriously, I did not know our boy had it in him.

 

The earring cameos are like a lot of his bacchantes in being good, but falling short of excellent. Now & then he seems to have been in the groove.

 

I know his best work is never going to be The Best Work, but it's so much better than I realized it could be.

Now those curls. Those dead straight curls. Those make me crazy -- and they're a frequent sin of cameo cutters.

 

I find there are cutters who do hair well & ones who do faces well, but only the best can do both. With Schmolz, again & again, you think about a new one, Oh, this is quite good. Then you give more attention to the details & it's always something. Except this hand. Except this foot...

 

What you get when you ask eBay to find 'cameo Michelini':

 

Another Silz/Schmolz that I really like. Signed, oddly, twice.

 

I think the reason we know all the sigs belong to one person is because there is one piece somewhere signed all the ways he signs.

@Bronwen will let us know if I'm remembering correctly.

That's definitely one of the pieces when he was "in the groove." I would not have guessed it was his. May have to raise my expectations of his work.

 

https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/bimbelot/substantif

 

Oh, a bibelot! Why didn't you say?!