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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bronwen, post: 8311984, member: 5833&quot;]You have stumbled into a hornet&#039;s nest here.&nbsp; To the best I can understand them from photos alone, I am convinced the first 2 cameos are shell, not hardstone, &amp; there is no really good reason to think they depict Barbarossa.&nbsp; They are part of a body of similar cameos depicting bearded men, some wearing a turban, a tarboosh or other cap.&nbsp; The shell used is not a member of the <i>Cassis</i> (helmet) family; it is some kind of colorful, thick-walled bivalve (clam type) shell.</p><p><br /></p><p>When you see a bunch of them together it makes more sense.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]426710[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]426722[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The one point on which they may be correct is time of making.&nbsp; Because of the mounts some of them are in - brooches with vertically mounted pins - I had been dating these to turn of the 19th century.&nbsp; However, when one turned up, along with hardstone cameos, as ornamentation on a lavishly <a href="https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/lempertz/catalogue-id-kunsth10164/lot-868692c7-d087-4648-9066-ad4e00ef8d93?utm_source=auction-alert&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=auction-alert&amp;utm_content=lot-image-link" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/lempertz/catalogue-id-kunsth10164/lot-868692c7-d087-4648-9066-ad4e00ef8d93?utm_source=auction-alert&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=auction-alert&amp;utm_content=lot-image-link" rel="nofollow">decorated elephant tusk</a> that is reliably dated to the 16th century, I had to rethink the matter.&nbsp; The V&amp;A also dates the 3 round cameos of Roman emperors to the 16th.</p><p><br /></p><p>These are routinely mistaken for hardstone, especially when set in a way that hides the back, which sometimes bears the concavity that is the scar where the large muscle that closes the 2 parts of the shell was attached.</p><p><br /></p><p>The shell used for these is very durable, so some are still around, but they&#039;re rare enough to make me think the time &amp; place of making was limited.&nbsp; I would love to know their secrets.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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