Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

A Fairy Tale​

Once upon a time, there was a delightful little cameo depicting the bonds and torments of Love using the imagery of Cupid and Psyche.


The cameo was of a type sometimes erroneously described as 'oyster shell' that is really a cameo cut in the white layer of a thicker shell, ground down to be as thin as a fingernail, and given a black backing, creating the illusion of being cut in banded agate. It was probably born in the Georgian era.

When the little cameo was seeking a new home, the kindly auctioneer who was helping showed the world this picture and said about it, simply: An oval cameo of a winged infant. Approx. 9.4 grams. Est. £60 - £80. Because the little cameo seemed very plain compared to other items trying to find a new home, and did have a little bit of damage, the auctioneer, although hoping a new owner would love the little cameo enough to pay more, at first was asking for only £2.

When the time came, the kindly auctioneer was perplexed but very happy, and the little cameo laughed all the way to its new home:




(Plus 18% buyer's premium.)

The End.

 

If that one was Cinderella, guess this one must be a step-sister:

 

At first, I thought YOU got it for 2£...

 

Now that would have been a rags to riches story!

 

I'd have bought it for two quid! I'm betting the seller was doing the happy dance.

 

The winning bidder, who will be out of pocket a minimum of £8,260, or about $11,000 US, must have been doing the happy something, not too sure it would be dance. Juice, maybe.

 

Pills possibly. It went a tad high, unless somebody was buying Grandma's brooch back and didn't care what they had to pay.

 

I'm enjoying imagining it was someone who got a whole lot of money in a nasty divorce settlement.

 

Or was joyfully spending an inheritance from an unpleasant relative.

 

@Bronwen
Could she be one of your ancestors?

 

Not wearing that cameo!

I keep an image file of cameos being worn & will add her. Here's another sitter with a similar piece:


And a woman wearing one of those ubiquitous W. German ones:


(Be grateful I didn't make her my avatar!)

Whenever I'm watching a television drama set in the Victorian era, including Victoria, & spot a character wearing a cameo I always try to get a good look at it. Almost always an anachronistic one, either artificial, like one above, or shell, but not very good & from the 50s.

If you wore one of the large ones, it surely forced you to keep your chin up:



It amuses me that staid (presumably) respectable women, like the lady above, so often wore cameos depicting Dionysus/Bacchus, who presided over drunken, orgiastic rites, or, like the lady above her, ones with a participant, a maenad/bacchante. 'Bacchante maiden' is one of my favorite oxymorons.

 

That first one, the painting, is LOVELY!!!

 

The Bacchus/Dionysius cameos may have been "advertising", a subtle way of telling the hubs that it's ON for tonight.(LOL)

 

The ones I find strangest are those that have some Dionysian image on the front & the photo of a child or a hair memento in a compartment on the back.

 

The first one looks like Mariette Hartley, the second more like Wednesday Addams.

The last is sort-of Dolores Umbridge.

 

Haha, I was thinking Adams family too

 

I knew you'd be amused
Your ladies wearing cameos portraits are neat! (Glad indeed you didn't choose the terrifying painted eyebrows one for your avatar)
Wearing Dionysiac themed pieces was perhaps a code for serious looking women that they weren't actually not so serious...

 

OMG, I would totally use scary eyebrow lady as my avatar. I love her.

 

I bought this carte de visite photo about a year ago and for a while was trying to figure out whether she was wearing a cameo, or a photographic brooch. What do you think? I also will include a cropped version just showing the brooch but I'm not the best at photo editing. The last one just shows that it was taken at the famous Sarony studio. I don't think the woman was famous, and she is also unidentified.

 

Another, cropped differently...