Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

This is one of the times when SNAD is a good thing. It's often an excuse to rip off a seller, but pinchbeck or goldtone sold as 9K is a Significantly Not As Described on its face.

 

Unless your jeweller has an electronic metal tester, I assume a simple acid test was performed. Do you know where on the brooch the scraping was taken? The cameo is a very nice one to be set in pinchbeck , but of course it's possible.

I'm curious: do you actually need the hinged brace to keep the pin stem firmly in place? It looks like there would be tension on it from the hinge end.

 

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forum and to cameos in general. I am trying to read up past threads, but would also appreciate more information if anyone could help me identify the gentlemen, give comments on the possible age of the cameos, etc?

The cameo faces on the earrings (I converted one of the pairs) seem to be Boccaccio and Petrarch. Petrarch is the one facing left with the rather corpulent face. Boccaccio I'm only guessing at - he is usually pictured in paintings and engravings to have more of a Roman nose, whereas Dante is depicted with a pronounced hook. And his garments seem more like that of those in the images with the hood and robes, rather than Dante's white coif flaps sticking out from under the red cap with a long tail.

The other cufflink pair seem to show Leonardo da Vinci with a hat. As for the bearded, balding gentleman looking to the left, I don't have a good idea and would therefore really appreciate your assistance. Maybe Titian without his cap? Reminds me of Freud or Doestoevsky too though.

I tried to check if they were glass or the faces were glued on top by running my fingernail around. They do seem translucent near the edges, but I read here that might not be enough to tell if they're truly hardstone. When held up to light, the black backgrounds actually look dark red - is that a helpful detail to identify the material?

I didn't even think to wash my cameos until reading this forum! So the photos are mixed of dirty state and clean state. The photos of the dirty cameos are taken with my camera that doesn't have a macro settting, and the photos of the clean cameos are taken via an app that does digital 5x magnifying (I cropped and zoomed in further because the cameos are hard to see the detail). The photos make the cameos look yellow, but after the bath, they are quite white.

Thank you for reading this long missive!


Additional details for anyone interested:
They are cufflinks, the cameos are small at about 1.0 cm x 1.3 cm or so, not including the frames. With the magnifying app, I could find neither a hallmark nor purity stamp, but thought it still may be rolled gold or gold filled instead of plated. I did see a number "46" surrounded by possibly a lowercase "v" on the link holding the cufflinks together". This particular style of double rope twisting on the frames look like the double rope twist element used on Archaeological revival jewellery that I've seen at museums by the Castellani family and people who used to work in their workshop, such as Giacinto Mellillo and Carlo Giuliano. But the jeweller who looked at the photos said that such style of cufflinks and cameos could also likely be from the 1950s.

 

Yes, there is a little bit of tension.

After careful examination the setting looks even more suspicious.
All the hinges look brand new and only the stick of the pin and the “C” of the clasp look old and battered.
It’s funny but the only thing that looks like gold on this brooch is the “C” of the clasp.

 

I’m having a little investigation of my own and can’t make sense out of it.

Couple of months ago:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mixed-It...b9f-4c3b-9007-fac8ca2bfb12#vi__app-cvip-panel

Mixed items
£2,280.00

Feedback received on 19/10/20 from y***0: “Thank you. Very quick shipping!”
I’m assuming the Mixed items were sold.

Surprisingly, items from the same lot are now been listed again.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Victoria...882524?hash=item5958dbb2dc:g:qiwAAOSwXjFfceGC


https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Antique-...496352?hash=item592841e4a0:g:ff4AAOSwvqhd2wLa

 

Welcome, marig. Nice to have another member with an interest in cameos.

Yes. The natural counterpart would have been Michelangelo, but here's a plaster cast of an engraved gem identified as Titian:

That's consistent with actual sardonyx. That dark reddish brown is sard.

I doubt this very much. Of course any style from the past can be reproduced at a later time, but I have seen other tiny hardstone cameos with Illustrious Men - I have a bitty bar brooch with Michelangelo & Raphael - & there was no reason to believe they were not 19th century. I have never seen evidence of cameos of this quality being made in the 1950s.

Good job on IDing the other 3. People usually want to see Dante when it's really that cute Petrarch. Glad we could expand your knowledge a little by encouraging you to give the guys a bath.

 

I can only think the lot was returned for not as described & seller has now decided to try selling piecemeal.

 

Thank you for the detailed response and the photo of the plaster cast! Can you point me to a link or briefly say what is the relationship of the plaster casts to the cameos -- were they made as models for the cameo carvers, like a catalog of available pictures you could pick? You mention that you have Raphael and Michelangelo; is there an entire set of such little cameos to collect?

I'm so glad to hear there's a good likelihood that the cameos are truly antique, as the jeweller was dismissive of the cameos. Even my husband, who tells me to be less sensitive and read less into things ;D, independently thought that the jeweller was unnecessarily rude about my questions. It's not so important, as I really just wanted the set for Petrarch because I like his writings quite a bit. Dante is far more popular, but I think Petrarch speaks to the modern soul more.

I started reading from the beginning of this thread today and am having a good laugh as well as learning lots. Like laughing about the cameo being described by people here as the two-left-footed lady with her feathered fish friend patting her derriere. Or the failed auto-translate of Hebe as "lifting" and Götterspeise. That is indeed the brand name for Jell-O as a well as a word for "food of the gods". There's a verb in German "heben", which has the meaning of lifting, so maybe that auto-translate error will show up again. Or learning about the Venus Kallipygos! So Kim Kardashian was not the first!

I probably won't be buying more cameos any time soon, as my jewellery budget needs time to replenish but I will definitely enjoy reading because it's fascinating to learn about all the subtle signs and symbols that once were far more common knowledge to the general, well-educated public. It seems like playing detective or archaeologist!

 

Using a magnifying glass, try to look at your cameos from this angle:

You might be able to see some layering or a slight change of colour in the white part. This may not be as pronounced in your cameos.
Another sign for a hardstone is if the carving goes into the coloured layer as well.

This is by no means compulsory. I have another cameo with carving only into the white layer.
Also, I have noticed a glossy line running at the point where the white and coloured layer meet.
Finally, looking from the side where the two layers meet, turn the cameo around and see if the line is absolutely flat or slightly undulating. In natural stones the different layers rarely are absolutely flat.

Obviously, these are my own observations and if I’m wrong in any of them I’ll be glad to be corrected.

 

The plaster casts were made as impressions of engraved gems, mainly intaglios, but some cameos. They became a wildly popular collectible. James Tassie was the major producer, but he had many competitors. Some, such as Paoletti & Liberotti, made sets that were contained in boxes made to look like books & that might have a theme, e.g., gems that copied the works of the sculptor Canova. They included an index identifying the subjects. These impressions were not made for the benefit of cameo cutters, but they did function like a style book; most shell cameos with a classical theme can be traced back to an impression & from there to the gem behind it.

I had forgotten some of the fun we've had with cameos. These days I see bad ones, but, alas, not the grotesque ones of old.

Re: the miniature cameos of illustrious men. There must have been a workshop that turned them out in quantity. They're durable, would expect them to survive well, although the small size & the small items of jewellery they are mounted in may mean they got lost along the way. You could decide to collect them & save money that way: they are not common. With four, you already have the largest collection of them I know. Trying to remember who was on the other 2 I've seen. Could've been Michelangelo & Leonardo. They would make a great set of shirt studs.

 

Perfectly sound ones.

 

It's the extremely rare contemporary jeweller who knows the first thing about cameos, although they are quite happy to make a pronouncement with an air of great authority. I've seen some of the silliest appraisals of cameo jewellery written up by someone with GIA cert. after their name. They're not always capable of telling shell from stone when the color is similar.

How large are your cameos? The ones in my little brooch are 1 cm tall, too small, I think, for cufflinks.

 

Hi there, newbie here, I've been cleaning out my mom's house after she passed last summer, and I found this cameo in a box helpfully labeled "Old Stuff". I think I also found my paternal grandmother's wedding rings in that box, which might make sense because her family immigrated from Italy in the early 1900s or thereabouts.

I've done the obligatory Googling, and I'd just like to learn more about this piece. I don't even really know what to ask. I did see the "what to look for" post. I clicked on a link in this thread and found someone with a very similar one called Clytie! I'll have to go back to see if I can find it again and tag the user. @Bronwen I think it's you.

Any info would be helpful. the piece is about 1.75"x1.5". Thank you!




I'm having trouble inserting the images so here's the links or I think you could look at my profile.

https://www.antiquers.com/media/l-rosi.8071/#media
https://www.antiquers.com/media/cameo-box-label.8070/#media
https://www.antiquers.com/media/luigi-rosi.8069/#media

 

OOOHHHHH! She's a beauty, singed and info on the back also - WOW!!!!!!

 

Welcome, BellaSarah! You can "embed" the pictures from your album right into a post here by clicking on the little camera icon in the reply toolbar. That will help other members see them directly without having to toggle back and forth.

 

@BellaSarah Welcome to Antiquers.com What a lovely thing to find in a box of 'Old Stuff'. Luigi Rosi was active at that address in the 1860s - 1880s (86 is the street number, not the year), so the cameo is definitely old stuff. It is a 'hardstone', pietra dura, cameo, which is to say it is agate. The subject is indeed the nymph Clytie, who seems to have been a favorite of his. The ones you saw earlier in the thread belong to me:



I so envy your having the original box, with the dealer's notations, even though we can't decipher them. Very cool. BTW, great photos.

 

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It was on Pinterest. I was Google Image searching "Selene cameo" after seeing the post by Willcpfc. Just my love of eye candy.

 

@marig Here's a terrible (darn tremor) photo of my little brooch with Michelangelo & Raphael confronted.



You can see the cameos are very small but still with good detail.

 

Someone cared about the piece enough to have the closure made more secure.