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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bronwen, post: 1961722, member: 5833&quot;]Afraid I am failing you completely on this one.&nbsp; It&#039;s such a vast field, I&#039;ll never stop learning.&nbsp; My focus has mainly been on cameos from the Victorian era.&nbsp; When my interest was first developing, I did not look at intaglios at all, nor at anything said to be earlier than Georgian.&nbsp; Your piece would be &#039;from the antique&#039;, meaning copied from a gem dating to what we call antiquity.&nbsp; The farther away from neoclassical art, the less I know.</p><p><br /></p><p>The way the facial features are rendered is no doubt characteristic of a particular time period in the history of engraved gems &amp; an expert in the engraved gems of antiquity, such as Sir John Boardman, could probably tell you immediately when it was.&nbsp; However, even institutions like the <a href="http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/gems/default.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/gems/default.htm" rel="nofollow">Beazley Archive</a> frequently have to label pieces like this as &#039;Warrior wearing helmet&#039;, sometimes with a speculative ID, &amp; leave it at that.&nbsp; I suspect there was a convention for how these heroes were portrayed, with distinctive helmet crests, beard/no beard &amp; any weapon below adding up to a specific ID.&nbsp; I don&#039;t know the code.&nbsp; Admittedly, it is not something I have spent a lot of time on.&nbsp; I have massive reference books that might enlighten me if I spent time going through them page by page.&nbsp; Most of these photos are not very good, but you will get the idea of the variations.&nbsp; First is my Ajax.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]246521[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]246522[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]246523[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]246524[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s another:&nbsp; <a href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/132910670689" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/132910670689" rel="nofollow">http://www.ebay.com/itm/132910670689</a></p><p><br /></p><p>The other part of your question is one for a jewellery historian.&nbsp; All in all, I would have to guess, based on construction &amp; condition of the ones I see, that they date late in the period when there was still any market for fobs.&nbsp; Engraved gems seem never to have become the rage in the US they once were in Britain &amp; Europe, but these date later than that &amp; intaglios, particularly signet rings, became standard in the range of American gents&#039; jewellery.&nbsp; Very often cameos &amp; intaglios were made in one place, mounted in another, so could be an American setting with an imported stone.&nbsp; I have yet to see evidence that Italian artisans were engraving these.&nbsp; My best shot is that they are American or British.</p><p><br /></p><p>A long winded reply with no firm conclusions, alas.&nbsp; At moments like this I really miss [USER=8184]@Jivvy[/USER] who probably would have become intrigued &amp; started running down who these guys are.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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