Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

Thank-you very much for the link Bronwen! I have never heard of or seen any work by Dionysio Miseroni or the family - certainly an eye opener for me. I would have thought those pieces were glass rather than rock crystal, they are drop dead gorgeous I can only imagine what they would look like in person!
Those cameos and sculptures are stunning, and again, something I've never seen before. Maybe one day I will come across one

 

You can always do what others sometimes do in other forums & ask us to have a look at something you're considering buying. Most of the time, with adequate photos, it isn't hard to tell real from fake, although some of the fakes are getting frighteningly good when it comes to appearance. When you can't touch, they can be very convincing.

To take the example of your resting peasant, if I were evaluating this in an on line listing, I would have no trouble knowing it was shell. Modern fakes imitate the color really well, even the gradual shading, but they are never curved like this. That concave back & the way the bezel has to rise & fall in a saddle shape to follow the edge give it away. So does the less than machine-perfect carving. Sometimes the tip off is that a piece is too perfect. I even find the grime in the crevices a clue: natural materials, no matter how smooth to the fingertips, are always faintly grainy & hold skin oil & dirt more readily than do resin or glass. One of the reasons, among several, I thought the red & white bearded man shown above was glass is that he was so grime-free. Most cameos arrive here in need of a bath.

 

Aren't they amazing? Did you look at the Masnago pieces as well? The like is just not done anymore, not in a good 250 years. That's progress for you.

Have seen 1 or 2 Masnagos offered by the sort of auction houses who handle such things. Not sure I've ever seen a Miseroni offered for public sale.

 

I missed the post with the Masnagos link, just found it so I'm off to have a look

 

Realize that I did not add that your conch shell cameo is a lovely bacchante, adorned with grape leaves.

 

Thank you!

 

Thanks so much for your responses. Italian, 20th century peasant, would he be before or after WW2?

Thanks for the invitation, so here are a couple of the ones I'm not sure about. I did check that they appear to be hard, so not just obvious reproductions in soft plastic like I sometimes see. But its harder for me to judge when I can't see the back, and the mounts seem cheaper and later. The first would appear to be a typical design shell cameo much smaller than the peasant.

As to the second one, I thought all cameos were on pink shell until I started reading the cameo posts here and realized they have been made on all manner of materials. I had thought the black one might be glass, but maybe it is stone? Is there some tests other than visual appearance to distinguish the different materials that are used?

 

Hi @Bronwen! Just an FYI......here is a link to the kind of setting I love....the cameo isn't bad either.....and I'm not locked in to a +/- #200. price range.....but can't go SKY high either!!!! It does not have to be a lady on the cameo either.....just happened to see this....I love the choice of necklace or pin!!

https://www.rubylane.com/item/97654-2961/Antique-Edwardian-Diana-Huntress-10k-rose?search=1

 

This is the second time in 24 hours that someone has drawn my attention to a cameo that is shown to be signed without any mention from the seller. Afraid I can't quite make it out, starts with 'A' I think, maybe one of the names from that period will pop into my head eventually.


They have certainly priced it as though they realize it is signed & know by whom. Ruby Lane is never the place to go shopping for cameo bargains, although a search of eBay for 'cameo shell Diana gold' shows you could also do worse.

There are 2 in the results at the moment I would be happy to have myself, although one of them is a bacchante, not Diana. Seller of item #
332305854378 says the piece is signed but too faint to show:


Item # 112531739412 is a very pretty conch shell Diana:


Both are supposed to be 14K. May still be more than you want to spend, and may or may not be to your taste, but shows you can probably find something you like at a price closer to what you are prepared to spend. Of these 2, the bacchante is the more appropriately priced; the conch shell piece is still rather high.

As a quick way of seeing others you might like, you can run the same search, except substituting Flora, bacchante, Dionysus or Bacchus (latter 2 will overlap) for Diana. There are of course other Dianas listed but unidentified. There are a couple that use 'maenad' without also using 'bacchante'. Did not see any I would recommend for the price, but the more you look, the more you refine what you want & the more chance you have to find it.

 

The peasant himself I suspect was from an earlier time when the cameo was made. I'm getting mixed signals on the age of the cameo. Setting is often a good clue, although repairs can be misleading. This has a 20th century hinge & clasp but the overall feel of the cameo & its less than perfect oval shape make it feel a little earlier. I can't tell from the photo if any of the hardware has been replaced. Cameos were not necessarily set near to the time they were made. Cameo cutters were not generally jewellers, so lots of cameos bought in Italy were not set until the tourist got them home, where they might get put away, unset until a later time. Yours I can only loosely put to 1880 - 1935.

 

Because of some irregularities on the surface of the first of these two, I think it is some kind of plastic material, maybe resin?

I can't tell so much with the second one with black background. It could be glass, also could be a plastic/resin type of material. I'm pretty sure it's not a stone, although I've been wrong before.

By the way, if a cameo is made of shell, most (not all) of the time you can see light coming through if you hold it up to a strong light and look through it. I realize you can't try that with these since they have closed backs.

 

The first is shell; the second is molded resin.




Ponytail Girl can be tricky. She's the only cameo subject I see endlessly who has been actually carved in shell as well as being made from a mold. In some cases the resin used is so similar in color to shell it can be very difficult to know from only a photo, especially, as you note, if the back is covered. However, in this case, while the figure herself is the right color for shell, the background is not. She is also found as a white figure on colors that cannot be mistaken for shell.

The little generic pretty lady, who is probably 1940s-50s, is not only the right color for shell, she is the right shape. When viewed edge on, see how she rises & falls, while Ponytail Girl is so flat. The edges of the background layer are rounded; P.G.'s are straight. (She actually looks more like an agate cameo from the side but is never done in that material.)

You would find, if you tested them against your teeth, that the shell cameo would feel, even if ever so faintly, slightly grainy/gritty; the other would feel like what she is, plastic.

Here are some general tips for what to examine when trying to determine a cameo's material.

 

Irregularities are more often an indicator of natural material.

I should add to comments on how the cameos appear from the edge is that another thing to note is whether there is a sharp demarcation between the color of the figure & the color of the ground. As with many points, this by itself does not always tell you all you need to know & has to be taken in conjunction with other features. What I can just make out about the first one, peeking through the scalloped edge of the mount, is that there is a layer of orange under the white figure that rises above the level of the 'table'. A shell cameo will not necessarily have this, it depends on carver skill/preference & thickness of layers available to work with, but artificial cameos never do.

 

Sounds fine, and I see what you mean. Looking from the side helps. The irregularities I was referring to are to the right side of the face in the background of picture #2. It still looks odd to me, but I think the other evidence you cited seems convincing.

 

19th century peasant; 20th century brooch with cameo that is possibly 19th century.

 

I see what you mean & if all that you had to go by was views like that, you would feel pretty confident she was resin. She has a lot of surface crud, has been knocked around & not finished off with any great care. When resin pieces show surface irregularities, they are generally on the back; the side that was against the wall of the mold stays smooth. This one is also a bit deceptive because it is small & thick. Shell segments like this may have almost none of the concavity on the back that so often helps make the diagnosis.

I and a friend who is every bit as knowledgeable about these things as I am have gone round & round, finally agreeing to disagree, over whether this cameo, which she gave me, is real or artificial. She is surprised that I have been fooled; I can't persuade her it is shell.

 

WOW! Thank you SO much Bronwen, for all that information!!!! Will check out what I can!!!

 

By the way, some time when I can I am going to do more investigation of a cameo I have. I've always assumed it's a plastic. It is in a cheap goldtone metal setting and some other things made me thing plastic. It's kind of heavy, for another thing. But it's very beautifully done. The back is closed, so it's harder to assess. I've always liked it a lot, though. It would surprise me if it turned out to be shell, but now that I've been reading this maybe it wouldn't surprise me as much now as it once would have.

 

Once you've looked at, &, just as important, handled enough cameos of different types, your ability to pick up the entire gestalt, the combination of color, shape, surface texture, appearance of any chips or cracks, plus the subject & quality of carving, gets quite good. One of the things you develop is a mental library of images & the knowledge of which ones are seen repeatedly in man made materials, which are not.

Covered backs, when not required by the type of setting, are always a red flag that suggests a piece should be examined closely, but are not by themselves guarantees one way or the other when it comes to real or fake. And I would certainly rather have one of the beautiful glass cameos the French have made than a crudely carved shell one. I can tell by the prices asked that a lot of sellers confuse 'genuine' with valuable.

 

Hi again @Bronwen!!! Well I have found the Perfect cameo that I would LOVE to own.....problem is I found it in the SOLD listings at 'antiquecameos.net' , never mind the fact that it was probably a gazillion dollars anyway!!!! I am now seeing that I probably need to spend more to get something really nice....duuuuuhhhhh!!! Here's the perfect one!! I think my taste is improving



A second fave I have is on Cameo Heaven which I did not realize at first it was in the site owner's NFS collection.....OH well.....dream I must still.....