Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

As a Yank, the intricacies of royal protocol never cease to amaze, but does not sound like anything the Prince was expecting. And it seems to be Gibson asking permission to make a gift of it, not fulfilling an order placed with Saulini.

 

permission to present.......to me sounds like setting up a meeting..

 

Yes, to me too, he wants an audience. I'm just mulling the presentation of this letter as evidence that cameo we were investigating is the cameo of the letter. As a prominent English artist of his day, Gibson was probably already known to the royal family. I can imagine the requested meeting being Gibson's opportunity to 'sell' the Roman Saulini to Albert.

The RA adding the Grove entry to this is misleading, I think. Surely the biggest honor was not a commission for any single cameo but being asked to create the numerous cameos, hardstone & shell, used for the badges of the Order of Victoria and Albert, which would have included the badge the Queen herself wore. Unlike all the others, hers had his profile in front hers.

 

@Bronwen please do you have any ideas about this?
I think it’s silver, there is a mark in the chain but nothing else. The surround looks a bit hand made, the black looks to be glass and the pink I have no idea. It chinks like glass so maybe it is but there are some lines across it like the surface cracks on old plastic but it isn’t plastic.It’s about 3/4” tall.
Google search and google lens have let me down
The cameo appears to have flowers in her hair but it’s all a bit vague!
Thankyou

 

You have characterized her very well. She is glass, assembled from 2 pieces. Those fissures in the surface strike me as being like what happens to a hot liquid when not allowed to cool gradually & thoroughly.

The only thing in her hair I can see clearly is a flower, so I guess you could say she's a Flora type.

I have no way to say for certain what the silver colored metal is, although doubt very much the mount for the cameo is actually silver. You can often smell silver if you heat it up just a little. If you rub the back briskly against fabric (maybe not clothes or anything that matter lest oxidation rub off) can you smell it? The chain may not have come with it, so could be of a different quality. I can't decipher the mark; can you?

 

Thankyou.
The mark isn’t clear enough to read unfortunately. My acid is off so I need to get some more.
Is it possible to date the by the construction of the glass on glass?
I didn’t know about the fissures caused by cooling too quickly, that’s interesting.
Thankyou

 

Just to clear things up and prove why the expert is wrong again, so very eager to dismiss my rare cameo, adamant it doesn’t look anything like a version of john gibsons Victoria.. which in fact made 2 of them.. one given in 1847 after the first lot of cameos saulini did for Prince Albert.. this cameo being a version of this statue, and the second in 1849, one was from Albert to Victoria and vice Versa.
gibson was living in Rome and working on the first Victoria from 1844 from various drawings he had made, he wanted a different approach from the traditional type of statue and proceeded to make Victoria a version of an Ancient Greek statue, saulini had completed this cameo before John gibson altered the final first statue, he was ordered to make her look more royal, the tiara with Chased dolphins was made to resemble a coronet instead, a wreath was placed in one hand, a scroll in the other.. emblems of the Bristish isles added ( all had meaning which I won’t go into ).. I have more information about my cameo, but I don’t want to go on and on so here’s a few details the experts keen eye clearly missed, apparently my cameo doesn’t have the correct hair, the head piece differs.. it looks similar to other statues but not the one John gibson did, if you notice on my cameo which is the side view of the statue- there is a dolphin to the front with waves running down the sides, beadwork along the bottom long and small.. the hair is not plaited at the front but coiled and plaited at the back twisted into a bun, she has the Partial mouth gap, everything is exactly like John gibsons Victoria apart from the tiara that was made to look like a coronet ( the points on top is the ONLY thing that differs )..here is the face..

 

Notice the coiled hair at the front going over the ear with the bottom part of the ear showing? Notice the dolphins and waves down the sides and the beading along the bottom of the head piece? The hair at the back? The proof is in the pudding.. and my cameo looks more like Victoria than any of these statues.. you are welcome

 

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Not really. Can you tell whether she has been glued or the glass fused to glass? Can you catch a fingernail at the line where the 2 colors meet?

It seems to me I have seen these pink on black glass cameos more often set in men's rings. Given the rather home made look of the mount for your pendant, am wondering if she might have been removed & reset. Good chance she was made in Czechoslovakia.

Rummaging in my photos of glass cameos, found this:


Also this bit of live & learn from a cameo ring. As received, clearly in need of a bath:



After bath:



This one I would be willing to bet is French. They do it so beautifully you almost don't care the cameo is glass.

 

Three pieces by Wilhelm Schmidt are/were up for auction in December. One is described by Schmidt in his correspondence as one of his masterpieces. Schmidt developed a technique to carve opals and often used the brown matrix as another surface for carving.

The masterpiece was recently auctioned by Bonhams. It is a bust of Mars on a plinth with a cameo on each side. It is spectacular. It is signed on the back, although I wonder if it is a real signature, as it is supremely messy. The link has multiple pictures from all angles. There is also a video.




The estimate was very high and the lot was not purchased.
https://www.bonhams.com/auction/276...r-opal-gem-set-and-hardstone-bust-circa-1890/

The next piece sold today. It was not mounted, but beautifully carved on both sides and signed at the back of the helm. .


The final piece is a stick pin up for auction next week attributed to Schmidt. It is a cute little owl sitting in an old log.



I am amazed at the carving prowess of the pieces, the use of the dark matrix, and the fire in the opals. Just lovely.

 

The idea of carving opals...eek. Dud had some mad skills, to pull that off.

 

I was watching this & thought it sold for something like 40,000 GBP, or substantially below estimate anyway. See now the listing says 'Amended'. Guess seller, said no way. Wonder how much the missing diamonds affected bidding.

If ever the phrase 'romancing the stone' fit a person, it's Schmidt. He must have been on the most intimate terms with a stone before deciding how to use it. Of course every unsigned carved opal gets attributed to him.

 

Easy to understand why. I ran into one or two people who could facet opal, but this takes it to a whole different level. There can't have been many people who know/knew how.

 

Those are amazing Bronwen!. By saying the signature is messy, do you think that it’s fake? Not to take away from the undoubted skill needed to produce these but could they be newer?
If I’d done that I’d want my name on it though!!

 

That’s an inspired thought as it really does look like it could be off a ring. That would explain the lack of a hallmark if it was on the band.
Your photo of the white one clearly shows the same fissures. I don’t know how it is attached but it’s very firm and close so using glass to fuse it seems probable. Thanks for your help to make sense of this

 

@KSW I was wondering about the signature because of all the scratching below the signature. Looking closely, there seem to be numbers under the signature, like part of a date, but then it is scratched over. The signature also doesn't look like a 19th century one, especially the W, m, and d. If I was Schmidt and this was one of my greatest works of art, I wouldn't leave all that scratching on the bust. I would buff it down and resign it. Of course, I could be completely wrong.

 

On another auction site, the lot is listed as "Passed". The little head sold for 7,000 GBP. To me, it seems like then the bust on a plinth with 4 cameos should be worth more than 40,000 GBP. I don't have a feel for how big the diamonds were, but I agree that it could have affected the value.