Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

Cleopatra.

 

Looks like there could be a signature neatly hidden by the closed pin. It's quite a good piece.

 

I was thinking she was Eve; Eve got a little too cozy with a snake too.

Goldette? I don't think it's theirs, but they used the same cameo in purple in a similar fashion. This one's a little cruder. It's probably newer.

 

Seller is in France, so perhaps Goldette a little less likely. That intaglio of Venus teasing/disarming Cupid is not quite so widespread as Headband Girl, but you see it a lot, in all sorts of pieces.

Eve is usually shown more au naturel, completely naked & hair down, never a diadem. The snake tends to stay wrapped on the tree.

 

@kyratango Felt I had to write this seller. Too bad such misinformation has got into a collectors reference book. Author even comments on how strange it is to have such a cameo on an otherwise ordinary compact body.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/596806...=sr_gallery-1-13&organic_search_click=1&frs=1

Don't like dashing people's hopes. Also don't like fakes slipping onto the market as genuine. A serious cameo collector would know about this; a compact collector might not.

 

Yes! This one, when shown here before, had me!!!
So convincing...

 

I got this 14k cameo a while back. It's rather heavy compared to my other cameos and the back is closed, which makes me wonder if it is stone or shell.

 

She looks like shell; I see nothing to suggest she is not. What I can't tell for sure is what kind of shell. Helmet shell I think, after enlarging her. 20th century. Very sweet & appealing.

 

Beautiful piece @Xristina

Dear Bronwen, just for my information. what is jet, a kind of stone? Is it more like an onyx?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_(gemstone)

 

It's beautiful but presumably fake from what you are saying?

 

Somewhere in this thread, this mass-produced "fake" cameo has been discussed before. It's gorgeous... but plastic, if I remember correctly.

EDIT: Found it!
And here, too.

 

I shudder to think how this was done:

Pliny the Elder suggests that "the kindling of jet drives off snakes and relieves suffocation of the uterus. Its fumes detect attempts to simulate a disabling illness or a state of virginity."

 

Thought this was unusual from Pinterest.

 

Dear Bronwen, just for my information. what is jet, a kind of stone? Is it more like an onyx?[/QUOTE]

I'll add to the more technical & historical info on the Wiki site that jet is much softer than black onyx, so much less challenging to carve & shape. Whitby jet is quite light in weight for its size. The first time I bought a cameo set in jet I thought at first that it was plastic because of the lightness, the high degree of polish & the sort of clink it made when tapped with a fingernail. Came back to the English seller with my doubts. They were understandably a bit distressed, but reassured me it was jet based on their long experience. Had to concede that I had no experience other than with Zuni work in jet, which seems to be much denser & is not polished to such a high gloss. Subsequent acquisitions showed me that jet cameo frames really do seem a lot like plastic.

Jet is a form of coal. Imitations began to be made based on plant gums similar to rubber/latex. One brand name was Vulcanite, & it has become the noun for all these related materials. Unlike jet, they could be molded instead of cut. Also light in weight but tends to turn brown with time.

 

The term for these conjoined heads/faces is gryllos/grylloi. It's not unusual for them to be a mix of types. Here there is a young man, then, going counterclockwise, an old man or the mask of an old man, a figure who looks like Pan, a goat. This one is very skillfully done.

 

That's what I'm saying, & will keep saying, trying to get the word out.

Thanks, bluumz, for digging those up. The post that kyratango was alluding to concerned this photo of an auction lot for 4 shell cameo plaques:



Whatever polymer these were made of, it by & large seems quite stable & durable. I have learned from my own cat-involved mishap that it is hard, but brittle. I don't know what happened to produce this:



A stone cameo might crack or chip, but it would never craze like this.

The maker of these cameos & certain others is a mystery. Some of their products are marked in ways that suggest the firm was French & in business as early as the late 19th century. As nearly as I can tell, everything they did was misleading, not only their excellent imitations of shell, hardstone & marble. If you want to go deeper in this rabbit hole:

https://www.antiquers.com/threads/numismatic-fraud-mystery.31383/

For many of their faux marbe plaques I have been able to find the artwork being copied, but not for all their items, including none of their cameos, so not sure if they used some original designs or I just haven't found the originals yet.

This lady & her bird also turns up in silver by Henryk Winograd:



Don't know if one was copying the other or there is an original out there they were both copying.

# cameo fake artificial woman lady bird dove Winograd

 

Almost 3AM & I must be hallucinating:

 

Seller has not acknowledged my message nor altered the listing. Probably thinks the book must be right because, well, it's a book. And nothing is ever incorrect if it has been published in a book, right?