Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

Is that a philtrum or what?!

 

That is so bad!

 

African-american lady in bathrobe and head towel instead of a random fake pretty European with a badly cut nose. I kind of like it!

 

The latest pretty lady to join my ever-growing group of wonder women.
The setting is likely a gilt brass and is a bit worse for the wear but the carving seems quite nice. No signature found. The clasp has a lever safety catch and a round hinge. Possibly 1920s-ish?
I love the rich brown shell color! Emperor helmet or Queen’s helmet shell?

 

WOW, I think she is very nicely carved indeed

 

Definitely a worthy foremother of all the tacky pretty ladies to come later. Edwardian period is probably correct. I can't tell exactly which type of helmet shell, just narrow it down to, probably, this one:

 

The helmet shell colors are my favorites! But I never tried to distinguish among them in cameos.

 

There is so much difference in the coloration of individuals of the same species, it's really impossible to know with any certainty which one has been used for a particular cameo. I have never felt it mattered much, other than to sellers who think they sound more professional when they include the whole life history of the mollusk in their description. There is no difference in market value among the helmet shells.

Madascariensis:



Cypraecassis rufa:

 

Lovely -- Thank you!

 

For eyes rinse...

Not perfectly proportioned... Long bust, short legs But, nice buttocks!

 

Def a lovely tush!

What's going on here? A naked man with one foot on a rock, holding a leash/rope near a large feline's mouth, with other end of it tied to an anchor on which the naked man is standing...

 

Taming a cougar lady?

 

Somehow any alerts for this - and really, one should be alerted about things like this - got by me. @bluumz seems to have described the scene accurately. The anchor is seriously puzzling. Life of Pi? A panther is the companion animal of Dionysus/Bacchus; however, nothing else in the scene suggests the wine god. Will have to cogitate, be on the lookout, &, if I ever ID it in the end, have a dollop of luck.

Meanwhile, for the bondage crowd:

 

Holy tie me up, tie me down!

 

"RARE CARVED VIKING"

 

well... for a Viking, I'd say this one is pretty rare.

 

Athena the Red?

 

Well, it's rarely a Viking. More frequently IDed as a Trojan.

 

Could that lion cameo be biblical? Daniel comes to mind....and the anchor is a Christian symbol. And here is this, not that this would be Jesus in the cameo, but perhaps an allegorical representation of Christianity.

The anchor became a key Christian symbol during the period of Roman persecution. As Michael Card observes in his recent album, Soul Anchor: "The first century symbol wasn't the cross; it was the anchor. If I'm a first century Christian and I'm hiding in the catacombs and three of my best friends have just been thrown to the lions or burned at the stake, or crucified and set ablaze as torches at one of [Emperor] Nero's garden parties, the symbol that most encourages me in my faith is the anchor. When I see it, I'm reminded that Jesus is my anchor."


Christ Treading on a Lion

But in other scriptures, as interpreted by Christian writers, the lion represents the enemy that Christ will vanquish. For example, Psalm 90(91):13 says, "thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk: and thou shalt trample under foot the lion and the dragon." This leads to an early iconographic type in which Christ does just that (example). From the earliest example in 5th-century Ravenna this type spread throughout medieval Europe well into the second millenium (E. B Smith, 153-55).