Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

Even twin doves.

 

Thought this was unusual. The design looks like two unmatched halves. Unfortunately there’s nothing else about it on the Liveauctioneers site which just said Agate cameo and gave a date of 1840+ ish I think.

 

What the...honestly, it looks like someone's Photoshop homework.

 

I don't know what prefix you would need to capture how many 'tuplets' of these there are out there.

We took her up extensively in this thread:

https://www.antiquers.com/threads/numismatic-fraud-mystery.31383/#post-415534

 

I remember seeing this when it was up for auction and it's a really interesting use of the stone. If I had thought it would have been within my financial reach when the hammer fell & all associated costs were added in, I would have bid on it. Not sure what the findings were like, what clues they gave about age, but 1840 is probably as late as it would be. As the 19th century wore on, hardstone cameos became very homogeneous when it came to use of the color distribution in stones. The Romans & Greeks (not that this is what this cameo is) used banded & parti-colored stones in ways I find more interesting than in most modern work.

 

They probably used what they could get their hands on instead of what was "expected".

 

They had banded agate available to them, but were willing to work it cross grain, you might say:

 

If it looks cool, do it. Right? Why not?

 

A monday morning cameo, after a drunken weekend. Carver (chopper?) probably still under the influence.


Waste of a perfectly good sterling ring. Why do they even mount these atrocities?

 

Hi AJ,
That has to be the worst cameo I have ever seen.
greg

 

It certainly is the worst I have ever seen. Bronwen, with her vast experience, may have seen worse though.
I thought I'd share it, so I wouldn't have to bear the burden of being confronted with it alone. The seller calls it 'pretty'.

 

That poor mollusk deserved a better fate for its shell.

 

I was thinking the same thing; what did the poor shell do to deserve THAT?

 

I'm just glad it wasn't around to see the result.

 

The original meaning of the word 'hacker'. I too always wonder why anyone would bother setting such a thing.

I don't collect photos of incompetent, but now & then save weird:

 

I have a Christmas pin that I call my "two-headed deer" ... I know it wasn't intended to be two-headed, but what has been seen cannot be unseen.

 

I thought about buying a 60s banjo album today for the same reason. The cover art was so bad/weird it was good.

 

Maybe it's one of the 2 headed twins.............. https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/420...times-who-were-forced-into-human-freak-shows/

 

Interesting -- a friend just emailed regarding bilateral gynandromorphs (half female and half male animals, often split in colors right down the middle). I had never heard of this but the cameo reminds me of it!

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150916-these-animals-are-male-on-one-side-and-female-on-the-other

 

I initially thought that this person might have been Bacchus as I thought the other half featured vines and grapes.