Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

Wow, hardstone! This summer I will do the sorting.... I do have some that are very pretty... people here in my region are always looking for cameos, so I don't mind picking them up. I go to a few regular flea markets during the spring/summer months, estate sales, amazing what antique malls yield.

 

Blown! Thought by now everyone would have figured out it's my site.

Honestly, wouldn't suggest you subscribe at all, or not at this time. General information about cameos, everything under Reference, is available to all. Haven't done them all yet, but intention is to put up all the most commonly seen subjects for free as well. The Basic Subscription includes some less well known or frequently misidentified subjects that do come along regularly, just not so often. Premium is for the hard core. No one has yet posted a cameo here that is not, or will not, be covered in the free material.

Originally I didn't want to charge for anything, but: A) it costs money to have the site & B) realized I work darn hard & spend a lot of time to find out & pull together some of the information, which has monetary value to dealers. If it could be done, would make it free to people who are primarily collectors & charge those who only handle cameos they are selling.

If you decide you really would like to subscribe, let me know. There's a discount (50%) coupon for friends.

Meantime, any & all can submit questions about cameos through the Inquiry form on the left of the home page. That's how I saw the other conch lady in a high collar.

 

I have some idea. My cameos are a collection, maybe I could make all my rings sound less like an addiction & more like an investment if I called them a collection.

I have cameos & other jewellery all over the place. Many years ago (pre-cameo era) made it easy for a burglar by having all my jewellery in a big, beautiful, handmade chest sitting prominently in the bedroom. Still have the chest, but contents now things it would not break my heart to lose. Keep thinking about whether I need a safety deposit box. But I enjoy having my cameos where I can look at them when I want & the good jewellery where it is not a big deal to get it out to wear. Have things stashed in places where a thief who wants to be in & out as fast as possible is not likely to find them.

 

No, alas. I do not much like contemporary cameos & own only one, by Aniello Pernice, bought because I wanted the subject, it was a good copy of earlier ones & the price was right. Would like to observe methods of working.

Can't tell you how often I wish I could have been a fly on the wall in the workshops & studios of the 18th & 19th century. There's so much that seems never to have been documented, leaving me with so many questions.

If I could get to Naples, besides the Vesuvius sites, would want to spend days, weeks in the Museum.

 

I think the Ponte Vecchio in Florence has been a jewelry market pretty much since it was built.

 

Looks glorious. Too long ago to say, I was in Rome for 3 days & I adored it. Have always wanted to go back. The majority of cameos take their images from Baroque or neoclassical paintings & sculptures, or from 'the antique', what most of us would call antiquities, not to mention copying each other. The Archeological Museum holds so many things that provided inspiration, as do the Vatican Museums & the Uffizi. So you know where I'd want to go when in Florence. Lorenzo de' Medici's gem collection was legendary.

 

I did the Rome, Florence, Venice 10 day, 8 nights tour. Florence was my favorite city, even though we were robbed there (two guys stole the boyfriend's backpack while I went to the ladies room before boarding the bus to Venice)... lost passports, airline tickets, and the car keys (car at the airport.) We got to Venice late at night and only had a day there.

My favorite things were the Sistine Chapel and seeing Botticelli's Birth of Venus, my favorite painting. And the gelato! It was lunch everyday.

Bronwen, I think I will take you up on the friend's discount soon. Great site! As to keeping things in a safety deposit box....I drop things off as I find them and spend time looking at the lovelies. It is amazing what I forget I have. I still love it and treasure-hunting keeps me going, but I wear a few basics. I have been collecting costume and fine jewelry since I was 17, and that will be 44 years come June.

 

You will certainly never forget you trip to Florence!

Venus is in the Uffizi but the only Sistine chapel I know is in the Vatican*. Did get to see it, & be blessed by the Pope. It was a student language study tour. Thinking back, they really got a lot into our time there. We spent the 6 weeks in France & Switzerland working on our French; Rome was a weekend junket. The frozen dessert revelation for me was the lemon ice cream in France.

Safety boxes are not something easy to just drop in on here & the neighborhood branch of my bank does not have a vault. Then, I tend to evaluate any contemplated new ongoing expenditure in terms of what kind of cameo I could get for the amount it would cost in a year. I don't keep enough millions on deposit to get a free one.

I never thought of it as collecting, but have been acquiring jewellery for about the same length of time. Really need to offload a lot of it.

In a certain way, the web site has not been a success. Part of the endeavor is to teach people how to 'read' cameos themselves, but several of my subscribers just send an inquiry to me. Often enough the reply is the link for the article on the site.

Now that there is some ability to search the Internet using images instead of words, an issue the site was meant to address has diminished a little. I'm trying to make it possible to identify a cameo subject when all you know is what you see & you have no idea what search terms to use, where to start with words. Image search leaves a lot to be desired: have loaded a cameo image & been given back an array of pictures of whipped cream topped desserts.

* Just clicked for me you meant of all the things you saw in Italy, not just in Florence.

 

Thought I'd put this up because it is such an oddity. I mentioned it in an earlier post. I have seen well carved shell cameos whose background layer was breaking up salvaged by removing the shards of brown & mounting the remainder in a custom built prong setting, & a couple that were broken out & affixed to a geode slice. This looks like it is mounted on chalcedony, but it is really glass.

I suspect an impression was taken of the intact piece before the brown background was chipped away. The glass is not a flat slab; it curves & dips just the way shell typically does & follows the back of the figures - a mother or big sister trying to write while son/little brother wants to show her a bird - perfectly, no gaps.

The glass is milky, almost opalescent, taking color from what's behind it. Some intaglios are described using the word 'nicolo'; they look blue but are really a thin white layer over black. Sitting on a black background, this cameo shows the same effect.

 

Think they are going to find this one does much better than they project.

 

Hi Bronwen,
OOOOOOOOOOH I love the cameo with the bat!!!!!!!!!! I am stunned at it's beauty.
greg

 

I'm on the lookout for the original of this version. It is less common than one based on a painting by Joseph Severn.

 

Just came across this specimen of a hardstone cameo of the noblewoman type with a big lacy collar.

 

Was prompted to see if I could get a decent photo of this one after seeing the 'Centaur of Attention' that @lloyd249 has for an avatar. It is based on one of the frescoes found at Pompeii and Herculaneum, although in the original the maenad is prodding the centaur with the butt end of her thyrsus, not the tip.


There are many images of centaurs putting the moves on nymphs/maenads; this looks like payback time.

 

This site sometimes "forgets" to notify me of new posts to threads I'm following. So it's been a week and a half since I last got a notice of this one. A lot to read!

 

I should have said thank you, Marko, for this.

It tells you a lot about my life that this is what passes for excitement. On the site I try to identify not just the subjects on cameos but also the art works behind them. Just lately found definitive answers for two of them.

One that had been plaguing me for years, on both counts, used to be, & still is nearly everywhere, identified as Mary Magdalen. Another, where the subject was clear, has now been connected to the original. They can both be seen in the article on the Anchor of Hope. The second one is the lady in the turban.

The one in between them, of the Galatea-inspired figure, is my new plague. Like the 'Magdalen', I can find a number of painted copies, but not the original painting or any attribution for it. Yet must have been well known at one time to have been picked up even in the world of cameos. If anyone finds her, please...

 

That's because I'm so, umm, prolix.

 

600 GBP.....is what's showing......and it looks BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!

 

And my Acquisition just arrived yesterday, for which I'm still ecstatic!!!! I couldn't tell when she was up for auction if her mount was gold or silver, and I was definitely thinking silver......did NOT matter to me as I thought her beautiful anyway. It needed a good polishing (the inside still needs more....was very grimy) but I'd say definitely gold....although NO markings of any kind....and I don't have a testing kit! Not good image...only had night light.......

 

Really beautiful!