Cameo Signature Help Needed

Last letter could also be an "h". Which, at this very moment (but possibly never again) makes the most sense to me.

 

Would the cameo below be by Henri Levasseur? When googling, all I find are bronzes... no mention of cameos. The signatures on the bronzes are very different than this. I did find one other cameo with the same signature (and a lot of wear) mentioned on WP.

This one is outrageously priced at $8000+ but is simply beautiful to look at.

 

I have NOT researched this, but checking Forrer's Biographical Dictionary of Medallists (1907), I'm more likely to think:



But I have not yet checked for mentions of him working in shell.

For anyone interested, archive.org has all of the Forrer volumes: https://archive.org/search.php?quer...r"+"biographical+dictionary"&sort=titleSorter

 

The second sig is taken from a bronze here: https://www.debaecque.fr/lot/26086/5837986

I have mixed feelings about whether there is a match.

 

@Jivvy, you're amazing! Jules siggie is definitely closer than Henri's to the signature on the cameo.

 

Good find, you two. Artists, particularly sculptors & medal engravers, did sometimes do cameos, without being known for this area of their work. I have one by Irish medalist William Mossop & another by George Gammon Adams. They are both portraits, so more in keeping with the usual productions of medalists. Adams may have used the medium to do studies for other work. This one is unusual in doing a typical country scene of a woman feeding/teasing a goat.

 

Still haven't found anything definitive.

"On annonce la mort d'un sculpteur de talent Jules-Clement Levasseur. Il etait eleve de Michel Pascal; il s'était surtout fait remarquer par les bustes-portaits qu'ol enveyait chaque année au Salon."

"The death of a talented sculptor Jules-Clement Levasseur is announced. He was a pupil of Michel Pascal; he had especially been noticed by the busts-portaits that were exhibited every year at the Salon."

 

Not related to anything here, but a guy (Bertinot) who died around the same time as Jules-Clement...

Bertinot's obit ended with, "he was a very brave man but a mediocre artist"

ouch.

 

Talk about damning with faint praise. Trying to decide whether or not mediocre man/brave artist would be any better.

 

Have found another for sale. Price is likely to exceed my desire to have it, but will give it a go. It has the more common signature, the one where the second vowel is formed like the first, so unless the name is Lomont, it's Lamant, supported by the almanac listing. I have one example in which the second vowel really does look more like an O than an A, otherwise very similar. And then there is one with the signature in cursive. Ready, steady, go:



The way the L, the only thing that can be compared well, is made on the cursive signature is significantly different from the other Ls with their tight little initial loop.

On the other hand, why would such a disproportionate number of cameos with the printed signature turn up on the market & the cursive be so rare if there were 2 of them, working at the same level of skill?

 

Was reviewing this thread & decided to squander a bit of time looking into this. I made an error & typed Juliot instead of Julliot & got a directory for Birmingham jewellers, opticians, etc., from 1863 & found this:

 

This Google result is tantalizing but inaccessible:

Individu : JULIOT - Recherche bibliothèque - Geneanet

https://www.geneanet.org/fonds/bibliotheque/?...JULIOT...
Translate this page
Choisey, et pour marraine d'^"'= Jeanne Juliot de Cvnavo Ue. ... ET AFFIRMATIONS Du sieur JULIOT dit LAMANT (Amsnd-Vietor), fab. de camées, rue ...

 

Adding in the second L, it would seem that the nacrier was a Monsieur Lamant-Julliot, & registered the invention of some kind of waxy polish in 1840.



While the 1859 Almanach has a Lamant-Julliot, in the rue Saintonge, who was a graveur sur camees.

I think I may now be more confused than ever.

 

Oh, I got caught up in the needlework piece and forgot about the Lamant/Lamont issue.

I'm going to have to read back over this, but it is tough trying to know what's going on in regards to the comparative skill levels without having back/front of each piece.

 

This was probably already discussed somewhere but I'll throw it out here anyway...

My main interest is vintage clothing. Name designers, even in couture, sometimes have never actually touched a piece, despite it going out of their "house" with their name on it. It may be their design, but someone else actually did the construction. Well, I read somewhere in the last few weeks about a cameo carver who worked in the XYZ cameo shop (can't remember the name of the shop but it wasn't the carver's own name), so that made me think of the possibility that not all cameos with a carver's name on them were actually carved by the personage of that name... that the name on the back of the cameo is the name of the head carver/shop but the cameo was perhaps just carved in their shop by an "under-carver".
That could account for the different qualities of carvings with the same name on them (ie: Silz) and, I suppose, why the signature may appear different on some pieces, or even that the piece is signed multiple times. And perhaps the shop had different price points for their cameos, depending on who in the shop carved them, though they might all bear the signature of the shop... like couture vs boutique vs ready-to-wear, etc all bear the same fashion designer's name. And taking it even further, perhaps different carvers in the shop were responsible for different stages of carving, or even for different parts of the carving, ie: specialize in hands, etc.

 

Okay, on the Lamant/Lamont issue.

What question are we trying to answer?

Because that is just how lost I am on this topic.

 

Another example of J Mouhe?

 

Because I've lost the plot, no idea if this matters.

 

Unfortunately I'm so lost in this thread that I'm learning very little from it. At least, nothing that will be remembered later. But still I keep reading!

 

We've turned up so much great stuff here, all of it unexplored anywhere else in the literature as far as I know, I don't want to lose track of it. Want to make a Word doc that captures the findings & evidence, so was going back over it all. Because I am currently bidding on a Lamant piece (cross your fingers for me!), I got snagged at the part of our discussion concerning that name & whether or not there were more than one person with that name cutting cameos, and whether the entry that lists a business 'Lamant - Julliot' at a different address than a plain Lamant in the same list if for: the same Lamant, doing business with someone named Julliot; another person, with the hyphenatted surname Lamant-Julliot; the same person, who had a hyphenated surname, which was not always recorded in business directories such as the Almanach, & had establishments at 2 different addresses.



The only thing I feel clear about at this point is that the Lamant-Julliot of Paris is a hyphenated surname, not a a partnership.

This

is a notice of bankruptcy for an A.-V. Juliot, dit Lamant, called/known as Lamant. It clearly ties in with the tantalizing genealogy site snippet, mangled by OCR, maybe a marriage notice:

Guessing 'Amsnd-Vietor' is Armand-Victor, also a fabricant de camees. Perhaps this is the father of Julien, who made what had been a nickname, Lamant (l'amant = the lover) into a combined name so people would still recognize the family connection? Is the Lamant Juliot found in England a few years on the same person? A coincidence? We have one Lamant signature in cursive that seems not to be by the same hand & is the only one seen so far when many of the other have appeared on the market. This lone specimen Armand-Victor?

Then there is the nacrier. We had this with Mouhe, as well:



The bankrupt Armand-Victor was at Philippeaux*, 36; Mouhe, nacrier, was at Phelippeaux, 33. Mouhe, the graveur en camees, had 2 locations. Is the Mouhe who sold objets en nacre at Chapon, 31, the same guy?

*This spelling seems to be a typo. His hearing date is announced on the last page of this Gazette:

Take your pick.

Yes. The photo with the pin out of the way was added at my request. In exchange, I sent him this: