Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

He's exquisite, isn't he? Does not surprise me he is so large. Plenty of conch shell cameos fall within the size range of a typical helmet shell cameo, but some are veritable slabs.

Love the way the choice of material really accentuates that 'callow youth' look, fully distinguishing him from his father.

Know I've shown this one of Hercules & Omphale before. It follows a gem engraved by William Brown:



I have seen only 2 or 3 conch shell cameos that were signed and never yet a signed coral piece. Sometimes you see lava cameos described as signed; it usually means the name of the subject on the front has been engraved on the back. It would seem there was a kind of culture that would develop concerning signing work: whether to sign at all; if so, front or back; engraved, scratched or acid etched; name only or other info as well. Practice adopted varied not only by time & location, but also by material.

 

Not impossible the fabric is itself a memento, but have seen enough cameos with otherwise empty compartments that have a bit of coarsely woven fabric at the back to think it is there to provide a better background than plain cardboard & perhaps help a hair memento to stay in place.

Pulled out this one to photograph as an example & now not 100% certain the background is not woven hair:



The material of this cameo is a mystery. I debated with myself for a long time over whether it is shell or stone. Photo doesn't pick it up well, but there is an almost crystalline look to it in places. Finally came down on the side of shell, just not of a conventional type.

 

The pin stem could definitely be a replacement. Looks like a kink had to be put into it after it was soldered to the hinge so that it would line up properly with the clasp. The original may have bowed outward to give the bit of extra space needed to accommodate the outward curve of the cameo. The pin on the cameo brooch with the hair memento on the back is like that, even though it is not a swiveling mount. The beveled glass cover rises a bit above the frame & pin would hit it otherwise. It's a close fit as is.

 

Love this, even though cracked. Unfortunately, not in this month's budget:

 

Here are the best pics I could get...

 

I quite like this one... except for the Fred Flintstone feet.

 

Exact match! WILMA!

 

And this is pretty neat, a cameo plaque of cameos!

 

Beautiful!!
Is there a name for that staff that the little satyr(?)faun is carrying? It looks like the one that Dionysus/Ariadne often has. I've also wondered what is on the head of the staff.

 

OMG, I thought it was Cupid riding a goat, carrying a torch.

Now I see how badly I misread it.

I have got to start getting more sleep.

 

Thyrsus/thyrsos. In modern times routinely described & depicted as a pine cone headed staff with a straight shaft, but it has not always been so. I got curious about how they would have attached a pine cone to a stick & tried to research this at one point. Learned that some sources say it is a fennel stalk. Never delved deep enough into the matter to find out whether the idea that the head is a pine cone is also an ancient one, or a later misreading of images of the giant fennel.

Sorry to say, none of these is mine:



Couldn't find some materials I thought I had & had to go back to the Internet to round up some of the fennel images. On the way, encountered this interesting bit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PrimitiveT...sing_giant_fennel_stalks_as_a_portable_ember/

Never heard this caught on:

https://www.rootsimple.com/2009/08/thyrsus-the-new-hipster-accessory/

 

That is not where I was seeing traces of a signature. Not sure that isn't some unfortunate accidental gouging. Did this all disappear when you cleaned it up?

 

All the white is gone now it has been washed, rubbed and oiled
The scratches are the only script I can see
I always wondered why some talented carvers used scratches as a signature...

 

What I'm wondering is whether the scratches that looked promising for a signature were really only in the white & were gone when it was removed or the white was making visible faint scratches in the shell that are now very hard to see. Have seen signatures that are just invisible unless you get the piece tilted to the perfect angle to the light. Could be a wild signature chase, never hurts to look again. More than once, on going back though my collection, I've found a piece I had not realized was signed.

 

Are those loops gone now?

 

Wonderful info, thank you so much!
I’d actually been thinking about it earlier in the week because this large beauty (with a really long pin!) arrived in my home recently. Ariadne?

 

Dionysus himself. There are many with softer faces & more rounded chest areas that are indeterminate; some see as the god, some see as one of his followers. With that strong jaw & straighter front, yours does not seem ambiguous to me.

I have shown this one before. I see it as a maenad/bacchante, but you could argue:



The differentiation of Ariadne from a maenad is not always easy or clearcut. In my observation, what characterizes depictions that are generally agreed to be Ariadne is that she does not have the wild look: hair more under control; wreathed in ivy rather than draped in grape; no goat or panther skin; no thyrsus. She's the consort of a major divinity, not one of his besotted followers. The most certain ones are scenes of the Cretan princess abandoned on Naxos by Theseus.

When it comes to the panther skin, cutter of yours seems to have been influenced by those mink wraps with all the little tails attached like fringe at the ends.

 

The figure on my cameo appears quite androgynous to me, I think I've gotten used to seeing hefty thick-necked "pretty ladies", LOL. Many depictions of Dionysus show him with some long flowing locks but how about the man-bun?

 

Just spent some time with the Beazley Archive's Tassie collection photos & the Thorvaldsen Museum's site. Your questions & my observations are making me rethink some things. I'm always on the lookout for the primary images behind the cameo ones. There are some that are common on Victorian cameos that I have yet to find elsewhere in the glyptics world or in other art. These 2/3 Bacchic figures, both yours & mine, are in that category: ubiquitous in shell; nowhere in engraved stone. I think both figures have their origins among the bacchantes, but the idea that some of them are Bacchus/Dionysus is well established out here in the non-academic world.

The one thing on yours that looks masculine in a way I don't see on female figures is the jaw. It looks influenced by depictions of Antinous, the 'companion' of the Emperor Hadrian. After A drowned in the Nile, H had him deified & his worship got conflated with that of Bacchus. Here's a fragment with the profile of Antinous:

and the 'Antinous Mondragone':



When I bought this I thought of it as a rather homely bacchante, then it occurred to me that it was a perfectly acceptable Bacchus:

 

I think this is beautiful!
Seller says pate de verre?
(Though at $1500, I won't be buying it no matter what it's made of.)

EDIT: But is he helping her up or pushing her down?