Cameo Signature Help Needed

I agree that eBay is a wasteland. I sold cameos for a short while on eBay many years ago, when it was still mostly an auction site, not a BIN site with lots of junk. Now I wish I has kept some of those cameos. But I sold them in order to buy better cameos and antique jewelry. Hindsight....

 

You have lots of signed pieces, more than me! Your collection as a whole must be stunning. I am envious.

I have signed, legible cameos from about a dozen known artists and several more that are signed but I can't make out the inscription. Should I post all here on this thread or send them privately?

 

Why don't you use this thread for any you don't mind sharing with the wide world. PM me if there are any you are willing to share privately only & I will give you a place to send. Last I knew, it's not possible to upload files to attach to PM, although you can cut & paste off the Internet.

Not all my collection is such high quality. I first got interested in subject matter & would buy a cameo just because it had a mythological subject I didn't own yet. I also got interested in materials & would sometimes buy for that. I did not hold out for investment grade pieces. These days I mostly hold out for signed pieces when they're affordable, which is usually when the carving is not the highest quality but the name is a known one. Collecting signatures now more than subjects.

I think you have been more highly selective in your collecting.

 

Have to wonder if I bought any of them! How long ago is 'many'?

 

I was wondering that too

 

It was about 15 years ago that I sold on eBay. I stopped selling when I sold a stunning mourning navette. The buyer pried off the frame, destroying the piece and then wanted to return it because she said I had shipped it broken. eBay sided with her and I had to refund her money and she sent back the ruined navette. That was an $800 mistake that I decided not to repeat.

 

I would be happy to post on this thread. I have ones that you are likely to already have, like Saulini and Ronca, nothing unusual. It seems I also have a Schmoll (Silz) based on the other parts of this thread. I never knew who that was until I found this board. I have a few with a signature that I can't read, so maybe some of the great eyes on this thread can figure them out.

No, I collected just like you. I have lots of cameos that are not high quality, but I still love them anyway. I first bought different cameo subjects. Then I moved to purchasing cameos that were well carved or signed cameos.

 

I did find a Garafoni in a book by Enrico de Keller. maybe this is the same guy?

 

I have so much stuff I need to sell, only a fraction of it cameos. When I hear stories like the Tale of the Navette, it makes me very nervous. I don't have anything I'm ready to part with just yet worth as much as $800, but with the cut taken by eBay & PayPal, selling smaller items seems like a lot of work for meager reward.

Wonder if you ever sold to a friend in England who has an artist's eye & more exacting standards than I do. Pieces you have shown remind me of some I know she has or has had. She was also collecting well before I was. For me, before it was cameos, it was a different kind of miniature sculpture, Zuni 'fetishes'.

 

I haven't sold to your friend, as I never shipped anything to England. I, too, have jewelry and cameos to sell and like you, have lost my taste for selling on eBay and other auction sites. As you said, a meager reward for alot of work. I wish there was a better way to sell.

My father used to collect Zuni fetishes! He also bought my Mom lots of beautiful Zuni and Navajo jewelry. My sister now carries that torch.

 

As promised, here are my signed cameos. This first one is Tomasso Saulini and is one of my favorite subjects. I am a little sad that it is broken and clumsily repaired with glue, but the detail is astonishing and I love the blue enamel. I hope you can see the ears of the bat, Ariel's armpit and musculature, the leathery markings on the wing and the peacock feather's eye.

 

Oh! That must have broken someone's heart when it shattered. Glad it has come to someone who loves it anyway. Beautiful mount. In my files I have a photo of another Saulini Ariel:



The painting by Joseph Severn:



I only fairly recently acquired my first Saulini, a gentleman's portrait by Tommaso, which I would have posted to the Show & Tell thread at the time.

 

Only 1? I have it least 7. 'Ubiquitous' barely captures it. A joke I made here that he must have given one away with every purchase in the family shop has passed on to the Internet as solemn fact.

As mentioned above, I added a Saulini to the stable not long ago. I have yet to bag a Ronca - have not seen many for sale & none at an agreeable price - but I do have an oddity, I have a cameo signed 'Chelli', & Ronca studied under a Chelli.

It was the member jivvy who worked out Schmoll, solving one of the great mysteries of the autograph cameo world. She has needed to take a break from the site, so we will have to bumble on without her. As you have time & inclination, why don't you sometimes post a known signature & sometimes put up a puzzle for us.

 

Surely this is the right guy. This is the 1830 list? Surprised the eagle looks more like a goose in such an early piece. Maybe Garafoni didn't like the way the eagle's neck had to be contorted in these scenes & chose to go with a longer necked bird. I have often observed that ornithology was a weak point for many cameo cutters.

 

Great! I am glad I could help out. Yes, it is from the 1830 list. Maybe Garafoni didnt know what an eagle looked like?

 

Wow! Thanks for sharing your cameo. The subject is interesting and the shape is unusual. I don't have a Chelli, in fact I have never even seen that signature before.

 

I have been reading the threads from the beginning. They have been so interesting and informative. You all know so much. I will continue posting.

 

Realized I did not have a photo of the Chelli after it was cleaned.





This is from the Palazzo Medici:



If this is representative of his work, Chelli was obviously not the most accomplished of cameists, but he got James Ronca started. Ronca took over from the Saulinis as engraver of the cameos used in medals for the Order of Victoria and Albert.

 

Yes, I have been researching James Ronca. In the Spring, I reached out to Judy Rudoe, a curator at the British Museum, who is an authority on James Ronca. Unfortunately, with COVID, she is on furlough. My Ronca cameo is more like a medal and it is dated 1850, which would make it the earliest dated cameo from Ronca. The subject is quite unusual. I will snap some pics later. I need help reading the inscription around the cameo. The inscription has something to do with Michelangelo.

 

I have enjoyed a sporadic correspondence with Judy, writing whenever I have something I think will interest her, usually an example of a cameo by a British cameist other than Ronca. I had the pleasure of meeting her when she gave a talk on Victorian jewellery to the American Society of Jewelry Historians, Alas, or just as well, I haven't found anything to share with her in at least a year. One of the last things I wrote her about is a cameo I bought signed G.G. Adams. I did not want to attribute it to the medalist & sculptor George Gammon Adams until I found evidence that he ever did cameos. I found it, in the British Museum. Another turned up in the Royal Collection.


(I had to rub in cocoa the bring up the signature, which was maddeningly unreadable in its natural state.)

Oh, good. A puzzle.