Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

Early USA! A native with his feathers!

 

Plus an arrow. Would not surprise me if this came from "SHOCKING TALES OF THE NEW LAND"!

But I was thinking, there has to be a folktale from somewhere that explains this. But there are so many folktales from so many places.

 

Think the auctioneer is in England; cameo undoubtedly from Italy.

Not sure whether those belong on the head of the standing figure or are part of what's going on overhead, which reminds me of Guercino's Aurora, with some of the Hours leading the way:

It's just weird everywhere you look at it. If cutter had a narrative in mind, it's a very eccentric imagining of it.

 

I don't have much more idea of what's going on in this Lamant. Three mortal women carrying baskets of fruit/flowers, probably meant as offerings to be used in the temples behind; Mercury & Cupid overhead; mountains in the background suggestive of Naples & Vesuvius.

Seller's photo better for details (black line that looks like crack just a thread); mine is better for color (white line is fur).

 

Sorry, first time I’ve had a moment today to do my stuff rather than marshall children, husband, dog and horses!.
The scratch on the left is just that, a scratch I think from a hard life. .I can’t get a good enough all in one photo so I’ve taken three that overlap.
Is there a good resource for signatures on the web?
Thankyou for your interest and help
Left and start of sig

Centre

Right

 

As far as I know, no.

Just cameo people like @Bronwen and research people like me.

 

Oh, but once you get a feasible name, a good place to look is Forrer's Biographical Dictionary of Medallists: https://archive.org/search.php?quer...r"+"biographical+dictionary"&sort=titleSorter

 

An experiment:



Or maybe not.

This thread & the related one about cameo signatures are as good as anything you will find. My main contribution is asking the right person (aka Jivvy) to take a look at the puzzlers.

 

I think the bottom one is the right way up, but boy. The new pics changes it radically. One thing I thought was a stroke, I'm certain is a scratch and it doesn't end where I thought. I'm currently at Intelligence Quotient:

 

I do not know what to make of this:



Description does not say what it is, guessing wax, but of whom? The Duchess in Alice in Wonderland?

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/...aign=auction-alert&utm_content=lot-image-link

 

This is a situation where one of my old professors would have said, "ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances."

 

@KSW Since you have this piece... can you tell if all line segments marked below are scratches/sig or if any of them are texture of shell/not part of sig?

 

Oh, my -- in her original box, too?

It has characteristics that make me think it is supposed to be a particular person. Somebody British? (Just a guess since auction is based in the UK.) Looking at the auction title, repeated in the brief description, I think she must be the "etc" to which they refer.

What about the cameo in that auction? Anything interesting about it?

 

It was a favorite saying of my mother's too. Or, as another saying goes, when in Rome, caveat emptor.

Apart from knowing that they did make portraits in wax, the way it has been kept so carefully in that little box also encourages me to think it is more vulnerable to damage than most other materials. A wax casting was one step in the process Tassie & others used to create a cameo portrait in the hard glass paste Tassie called 'enamel.' Have to imagine money played a role & that some customers commissioned & paid for only to the wax stage. It would be usual then to mount them in shadow boxes as decor.

That's it! The Duchess of Etcetera. How could I not see it? Seriously, though, she's definitely a portrait of a real individual, only question is whether she is the wife of a successful shopkeeper or someone with a title other than Mrs. She has been given that little wreath of flowers the way you might paint Emma Hamilton as a bacchante.

The box.

 

Starting to sense there's a 'type' here in some way, when it comes to material & subject matter, so probably also location & time period:



This one is being sold from Britain & mount is 9ct, so probably set there, not necessarily cut there.

 

This one looks like a chicken and a possum with a cat's face. That chicken is telling the other critter off.

 

I picked up this little lady yesterday, sterling mount. I think, based on the hinge and the rollover clasp that appears to be original, she is Edwardian, am I right?

She has a crack above her hair about 10:30, since it is only in the background I didn't think it was too noticeable.

 

Next to the nuclear power facility and just after the cooling tower malfunction?