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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bronwen, post: 680183, member: 5833&quot;]Interesting thing to make a little study of.&nbsp; &#039;Scratch&#039; is the commonly used term, or sometimes incised, for the signatures applied with a sharp point.</p><p><br /></p><p>The ones you reasonably call solvent I call acid etched.&nbsp; Think this is not my coinage, that I picked up terminology already in use.</p><p><br /></p><p>Seashells are fundamentally calcium carbonate, easily dissolved by even acetic (vinegar) &amp;, I would guess citric, acid.&nbsp; I can only guess at how it was done by how it tends to look.&nbsp; Perhaps brushed on free hand, allowed to sit undisturbed for some amount of time, then quickly washed off.&nbsp; They are rarely legible if you do not already know the name.</p><p><br /></p><p>Signing in this way seems to go with the period early in the 20th century, 1920s, I think, when there seems to have been a renewal of interest, an improvement in skill level, &amp; adoption of a modernized style of imagery among Italian shell cutters. Giovanni Noto &amp; the Scognamigilio family are known names associated with this revival &amp; what they started continues today, although not always with an equal level of skill &amp; sometimes with a sensibility that is so modernized it reminds me of Japanese anime, quite likely due to Japan&#039;s being a, maybe the, market for most of this work.</p><p><br /></p><p>If the style alone is not enough to tell you a piece is quite modern, the presence of the name cut into the front along with the design, very legibly &amp; boldly, guarantees it.&nbsp; It is a very recent practice, but not out of keeping with tradition.&nbsp; The rare signed engraved gems from antiquity have the name engraved on the front &amp; that was the norm.&nbsp; I doubt shell cameos were ever signed at all prior to the 19th century.&nbsp; On most this has been done by the scratch technique on the reverse.&nbsp; The Saulinis were unusual in routinely engraving on the front.</p><p><br /></p><p>I realize as I think about it that Luigi Rosi &amp; Filippo Tignani, active in the second half of the 19th, were unusual in scratching into the back of their hardstone cameos what almost amounts to an advertisement: full name, sometimes the date, words Roma or &#039;engraver&#039; (in Italian, French or English), &amp; complete street address.&nbsp; Rosi always engraved his name on the obverse, in the tradition manner; Tignani signed in all kinds of ways &amp; I have seen one with an engraved signature on the front, but seems to have preferred promoting himself on the back.</p><p><br /></p><p>The well named Sharpie method is something I don&#039;t see much, signatures applied this way may wear off, so perhaps done more often than we know.&nbsp; It strikes me as a lazy or hasty way of doing it.&nbsp; Can imagine some tourist visitor to a Neapolitan cameo workshop, buying a cameo, then asking Oh, can you sign it for me?&nbsp; I think your name accurately describes the method &amp; therefore gives an idea of age.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]185724[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]185728[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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