Featured Nice lava cameo...

Paging @Bronwen

A pendant for a change. The odd thing is I bought it for not a lot, about ten quid. But it seems to have been sold recently for a fair bit more, unless it has an identical twin!

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-...-as-a-classical-female-6-6--1501-c-72842c4853

 

If it's a not her, it's a twin.

 

Hauntingly beautiful

 

It's not lava. It is a high quality, mass produced piece. We have discussed these:

Gatierre, Danbiere & Other Mysteries

 

You paid a reasonable price. She has many, many sisters. Note the auction house does not specify material.

 

I’d missed that thread! I’d still have bought her, the frame is silver and well made. What is the cameo actually made of, do we know? Some sort of reconstituted something?

She also came with a Jean Cocteau silver cat brooch. And another, both of which more later. One of those Vishnu and thingie brooches.

 

I think the good solid silver mounts so many of them have are a large part of what sells them as something special. But the fact that the mount keeps turning up on other similarly fetching ladies helps give the game away.

I do not know. I've only ever had one of the little boxes in my hands & they're some kind of hard, translucent, brittle polymer. The material yours is made from, which you are not the first to take for lava, seems to have a chalky consistency. It is unlikely to be brittle, since the pin backing was screwed directly into it. It has somewhat the appearance of meerschaum.



It would be interesting to be able to examine one of their faux marbre plaques. Some of their concoctions work better than others. The marble is particularly convincing, not infrequently fooling auction houses.

 

Vishnu and Lakshmi?

 

That’s them. It nicer than the last one I bought too. Carved faces.

on the cameo, I’m fascinated now. The material is sort of a sandy feel. I presume it’s bonded somehow, but it doesn’t have that resin sensation to it. It’s not as marble looking as the one in Bronwen’s photo. I’ve seen marble composite and handled it, it’s smoother.

I’d love to know how old these are and the origin. Given the decent silver frame, they can’t have been cheap to make.

 

Me too. Antiques Roadshow thinks it has an idea. The link in this post:

Gatierre, Danbiere & Other Mysteries

 

Interesting that he thinks made in England. I’d have thought I’d have come across way more if they were, and perhaps seen them in gift shops and antique centres.

What a puzzle!

 

I have no idea where their info came from unless it's conjecture based on when & where they could find previous auction house listings. Probably no one has been on the lookout more than I for the origin of these goods & I have never found anything at all about them other than that ARS segment. Wonder if anyone else has put together their various products. I need to take a deep breath & add on to the 'Danbiere' thread the plaques I'm aware of.

 

I just watched it again & he says 'are being made', as if he believed they were still being made, 'England and elsewhere'. Wonder where 'elsewhere' is & why there would be more than one point of manufacture. He did not really explain that the original reliefs by Wyon are not his original art work. Some are copied from paintings, such as the Calmady Children, the one with the 2 little kids.

 

And he didn’t give any evidence, did he. I do think some of those PBS AR presenters just throw things out into the ether sometimes. I reckon he looked at that “England” label and concluded from it.

I was thinking about this today and I’d speculate that Italy is a more likely origin and possibly fifties into sixties. I’m basing that on the fact that there was a lot of production of repro antique art style souvenir and decorative pieces made there at the time. Partly for the emerging tourist market and partly because it went with that whole slightly florid taste. Think alabaster and ormolu boxes and table, and those florentine gesso trays and boxes as an example. Harking back to a sort of golden age renaissance and then Grand Tour reminiscence. The craft would fit for Italy too, it’s not very British at all. Especially in the post war period.

 

I had one of those Florentine boxes, back when.

This is such a tangled subject for me, it's difficult to get my thoughts ordered. It seems to me:

• At bottom this was an operation experimenting with plastic polymers. Some were more successful than others. The plaques were the height of production.
• There is a definite attempt to give the impression the items originate in France or Russia & some attempt to make them seem like they are 19th century.
  
• Someone, or more than one, involved had a real eye for appealing subjects. And there's a playfulness about the whole thing.

Why did the maker want to hide their identity? I would really like to know whether or not each original purchaser of a brooch or a box or a plaque or a frog (I haven't mentioned the frogs before, have I?) clearly knew what they were buying. Were they just making quality items in faux materials & pricing accordingly? Or trying to pull a fast one?

The choice of work by Wyon & Reynolds for so many of the plaques could suggest the maker was snagging ideas from artwork they were seeing in Britain. I think an Italian maker would have used the rich Italian body of work as sources for cameos & reliefs. I also can't see an Italian wanting to hide their identity.

I agree the time is probably late 50s- 60s, when Incolay came on the market & Lucite jewellery was the rage.

Leave 'em laughing when you go:

https://poshmark.com/listing/Antiqu...The-Calmady-Children-6689beb734d1566bfae3ba27

 

For example:

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/ite...&utm_campaign=Trigger%20-%20Lots%20Browsed_2A

 

One of the little tricks of this company is to tweak details. Most of these cameos that I have seen in this frame have been brooches. But here it is as a pendant.

Here a brooch, but with the pin running vertically, more characteristic of older pieces.

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/...link&queryId=42731a89677fcf6a95a19bdaedb5fa31