Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

@Aquitaine Was trying to remedy the non-connecting kithara player link & came across this very odd, & endangered, Hebe:

 

This is the one I meant. (I should learn to test my links right after posting so I can still edit.) My English friend whose Hebe you like has another, in a different price range. Not sure which one you found.

 

@Bronwen....thanks for the working link!!!! She IS very nice!!!! Price is easy too....except that framing is silver, not gold! But then SO is this one:
https://www.rubylane.com/item/753075-RL-00257/Victorian-9k-Gold-Carved-Shell-Cameo?search=1
although about 3X the price......very similar too!!!!! HMMMM...MUCH to think about now!!!! AND STILL want the right Hebe Feeding!!!!

 

@Bronwen, Can you clarify this?????? STILL VERY interested in a Hebe!!!!

 

She looks like she's been double framed? Nasty crack/split in it....I tend to like Hebe sitting and the other way, but the eagle looks fairly decent.....Why endangered??

 

The original link was for the less expensive dancer, which I think would clean up very well & hold its own as a carving with my friend's more expensive one, which title says is in 9K gold. I'm always happy when I can get a good cameo without paying the premium of the high cost of gold. But my interest in cameos is eccentric & has little to do with their use as jewellery. I'm happy to get a really interesting one at an affordable price because it is in silver or even unset. It also means I can display them without worrying so much that I am making it easy for thieves. This is in silver, on a little stand in the display case:

 

All I can say is she better watch her backside! It's just off someone's Pinterest board, not a purchase suggestion. Have never seen one composed quite like it.

 

Oh, just realized we are crossing wires. I meant my friend who has the Ruby Lane shop Nectar has another cameo of a dancer with a kithara, not another Hebe. But since you had not seen the less expensive dancer due to my faulty link, my ambiguous wording was easily misunderstood.

 

It's just more visible on this particular cameo. Most of the older ones have an inner frame, often of brass or lesser metal, between the cameo & a bezel setting. It sometimes looks to me as though this inner collar has not been soldered closed, so my surmise is that it helped protect the cameo from heat needed to finish the piece or otherwise to assemble it safely. My jeweller is always very nervous when asked to do anything involving a cameo.

 

But I DID go back and now have seen BOTH dancers with the kithara!!! On the lesser priced one, am not crazy about the fingers on the kithara. Both are lovely, but of course, the one on Nectar is the best!!!! Decent price....in your opinion????

 

Didn't get back to you right away because I wanted to check some things first.

The original citerista was a fresco at Herculaneum; the gem that seems to be behind the cameos was by Antonio Santarelli. The Nectar one is not only more crisply carved, it is more faithful to the original. In looking again at the less expensive one, I see there is some issue right near the center, making it look like a chunk is missing out of her arm. Can't tell if that is a fixed flaw, grunge that could be cleaned or a stain that will not come out. So the Nectar kithara player wins hands down for quality & condition.

I wanted to see what $500 could buy you at the moment & was absolutely appalled by most of the cameos being offered in the $450-500 range on eBay. The only one I saw remotely worth the money is a shell Antinous. The added value of this one is that the subject has 'gay interest', giving it a market that extends beyond the cameo market, so in that way probably a better investment if you're taking potential future resale value into account. I'm a bit surprised this one has not sold yet, although there are various ones based on different sculptures; this girlish looking one may not be the most popular.

Asking me whether it is a decent price is problematic in a couple of ways. Both 'Nectar' & 'nalfie' are people I know. I am trying to be careful not to steer you their way out of bias. The other problem is that I have been absolutely spoiled by having, over time, snagged a number of highly desirable pieces for well under $500, so my sense of 'decent' may be distorted. Just because I would not pay this much for it does not mean it is not worth it.

'Decent' depends a lot on what your finances permit & how much pleasure the piece would give you, factors I cannot gauge. How does she do on the 'How would I feel if..' test? Think it is not likely to get snapped up any minute, that you have some time to consider & do more looking. There is even the possibility Nectar will eventually bring it down a bit. But of course there is still always that other possibility.

Can't tell you what decision to make, but trying to give you some ways to go about making it.

 

On girlish versions of Antinous. I got this one for much less than I might have because seller IDed it as a girl.

 

@Bronwen, your input is ALWAYS valuable because of your expertise on the subject, and because you strive to remain unbiased!!! Which always gives me much to think about!! I AM keeping a close eye on the Nectar Dancer!!

 

This is the dancer too. For some reason the seller is trying to pass off as a brooch, not even a pendant, what clearly is a lone earring. They would have got good money for a pair. Too bad they didn't think it was important to get a photo showing the whole figure clearly.

 

They're calling that a brooch but it's clearly a single pierced earring

 

You could sort of fake it & claim it was for putting on a ribbon around the neck, Gibson Girl style, but how anyone could see it as a brooch...?

The power of wishful thinking is very strong. Think we all fall prey to it at times. Cameos offer lots of opportunity. I see shell represented as coral, glass as stone, post-WWII as antique, antique as ancient, with correspondingly higher prices than appropriate.

 

@Bronwen....will this turquoise one "clean" up or is this the color it will stay??

 

It's as clean as it's ever going to be. The turquoise & matrix are jumbled together. I like pieces done in unusual stone & stone that has some character of its own rather than being either a solid color or in very cleanly defined layers of color. They are often older than the tidier ones & not so many cameo cutters worked in these more challenging stones. This Athena is not mine, stone looks like it might be from the same source:

 

AH, so they're both, yours and the one directly above -'NOT yours', STONE!!! How interesting and LOVELY!!! Thank you!!

 

Yep, stone. The Athena might be by William (Wilhelm) Schmidt, who is remembered now mainly for his work in opal, but who also took on other soft, irregularly colored stones. The Antinous does not use the turquoise so skillfully, so doubt he is the author of that one.