Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

Looking at Xristina's cameo and the ones posted by Bronwen to illustrate Czech glass cameos makes me wonder about this small one that I have.

It was sold to me as glass but I thought it might be shell.

Unfortunately it popped out of its setting yesterday, I was fiddling with it, and I am not sure how to put it back.

The setting is base metal but looks old with a c clasp.

 

To me it looks like conch shell cameo
Could you post a pic of the back?

 

Thanks Kyratango,

I thought it might be conch shell as well.

I have a gem tester and have found it quite useful for cameos.
If I am really stumped I use my gem tester.

In this case the needle moves out of the glass range, but only just. With most of my shell cameos it moves quite well beyond the glass range. So not much help this time!

Here's a pic of the back as requested:

It is a small cameo, measuring just over 2cm long.

 

Got a chuckle out of this listing. Described by the French seller, who is obviously using Google translate, as "pasta on dough". (AKA pate sur pate.)
A very pretty Limoges box:

 

Still thinking shell after seing the back
Thanks for the pic! For the grading result on the gem tester, I have no idea

 

I was lurking this one, wondering what was the material (big size at 7cm), my bets are natural material, ivory or bone (those black puncts...)
The scene is unusual! Perhaps one Bronwen's favorite drunken putto had to be punished

https://www.ebay.fr/itm/Rare-Et-Ancienne-Miniature-En-Couleur-Ivoire/303301496747

 

Definitely conch shell:

https://cameotimes.com/index.php/reference/materials-guide?start=1

These ladies decked out in roses are usually just called Flora, which may or may not be any idea the carver had.

I don't have one, but would never occur to me to use a gem tester on a cameo/intaglio unless the question were whether it was stone or glass. Surely any organic material - shell, coral, ivory - tests as much softer than all but the very softest stones?

 

There is a German antique jewellery business that lists on eBay & clearly uses a translation program for their English descriptions, without anyone checking at all to see if they make sense. Results are sometimes hilarious.

A lovely box, though.

 

It's sold now. Did you buy? Price is very good. Ivory, Venus spanking Cupid. (Bow on ground; wing pushed to the side by her left hand.) I love it. It will look better cleaned up.

 

I was busy and forgot to follow the auction my bid was lower, so I missed it
I must snipe high the pieces I really want

 

I know, it is actually pretty odd that I ever thought to do so!


The tester is usually pretty good and the testing needle normally doesn't move if glass, or tests pretty low in the glass range. For shell and obviously hardstone, the needle clearly goes well above the glass range of the tester.

I am very hands on with my jewelry and when I bought my gem tester about 10 years ago I went a bit nuts and tested virtually everything I could, including cameos and this is how I discovered that shell tests beyond the glass range. I am not sure why, but it does with my tester.

 

Being Sunday lazy, so not checking facts. Think these contraptions test thermal conductivity, which seems to have a correlation with hardness on the Mohs scale for stones. Who would have guessed shell would give such a different result?

 

Just got back from a trip to Kansas City, where I visited the wonderful Nelson-Atkins Museum.

Traveling through the galleries, saw this very old cameo and took photos to share here. I'm including the information they provided next to it. It was inside a glass case, of course. And no flash photography was allowed in the museum galleries. Hope you can see it well! I might be able to edit for higher resolution...

 

Judging by the number of small gorgoneion cameos, loose, or in Roman rings of various qualities, these must have been very popular for their apotropaic (turning away evil/misfortune) virtues. Also widespread were Cupid faces & themes related to Bacchus. This is certainly a museum-worthy specimen: well carved originally; well preserved, without the damage or erosion of a ring stone worn steadily for years by a soldier.

Engraved gems are one thing that have endured & maintained - variable - value over time. Small, tough, couldn't be melted down, useless broken up. Originally they had value not just for the workmanship & image depicted but also for the qualities attributed to the stone itself. (Amethyst got its name from the belief that it kept the wearer from getting drunk.) As Christianity took hold, some stones were recut to give Olympian gods religious or historical connections. Sometimes intaglios were reused in ornamenting objects used in worship, not for their imagery but for the color or value of the stone itself, & set with the engraved side hidden.

 

So it’s very possible that a batch of items in a place like Vatican city have intaglios in them and we just don’t know it?

 

Yes. Unless someone really goes at them with bright light & magnification, you would never know.

Wish I could remember where I read/heard about it. A friend of mine found one. Possible he mentions it in this talk, which, if you have the time, is a pleasant intro to the field of collecting engraved gems.

 

He does, at about 14:30, although my memory was faulty about who found it & where it was.

 

I haven't watched it yet, but am looking forward to doing that some time today.

 

What wonderful information, I enjoyed it tremendously!

Please do pass along any other informative videos you may know of.
(I'm the type of person who attends lectures just for fun, LOL.)