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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bronwen, post: 4509211, member: 5833&quot;]Thank you for all the attention &amp; thought you have given my little mystery.&nbsp; (And thanks again to the many who also gave me the benefit of their observations when the item was first posted.)</p><p><br /></p><p>At this point there is no doubt about the glass being a true copy of the amethyst.&nbsp; Any apparent differences are due to imperfections in the glass (there is a good sized crater in the kithara strings left by a bubble), camera angles, lighting, &amp; my minimal camera skills &amp; equipment.&nbsp; Two of the biggest names in the field have unhesitatingly identified it as such.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Both of them were initially equally emphatic in declaring it of ancient origin.&nbsp; The first was intrigued by the lack of any trace of a signature &amp; found it material for speculation about what the relationships between gem engravers &amp; glass workshops may have been.&nbsp; The second attributed the absence of a name to the shallowness of the engraving, that the glass simply hadn&#039;t picked it up.&nbsp; When provided additional photos of the empty field where the name should be, the complete lack of the slightest trace, while very fine detail is captured on either side, the second expert revised her opinion to declare the glass &#039;modern&#039;, which can mean any time from the Renaissance on, although provided me with no plausible - or even implausible - explanation for why someone would make a copy obliterating the name, when that is a major part of its claim to fame.</p><p><br /></p><p>The name engraved on the gem is really not that shallow.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]395770[/ATTACH] </p><p>The quality &amp; skill of the engraving of the name is far inferior to that of the rest of the piece.</p><p><br /></p><p>The name is engraved strongly enough that some modern glass copies can pick up traces:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]395771[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>You could buy an impression of the amethyst from James Tassie&#039;s establishment, or of any of several others showing the same episode from the Iliad.&nbsp; This is Louis&#039;s gem on the left &amp; a recreation of it by William Brown on the right:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]395772[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>A couple of anonymous copies:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]395773[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>And two of the same scene, different composition, that also bear the name Pamphilos on them:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]395774[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>So anyone could have had an inexpensive impression of the gem from the late 18th century onward.&nbsp; However, even though it does not really show in the photograph of the impression, I cannot imagine Tassie would have been satisfied with it if the impression he took directly from the gem had not clearly picked up the signature.&nbsp; The quality of his work was good enough for Catherine the Great.</p><p><br /></p><p>If the glass gem was not made from an impression taken before the stone had the name applied, who would have had access to the stone to take an impression before Tassie did?&nbsp; Why would they fill in the name?&nbsp; And how did they do so without leaving any flattening?&nbsp; There is no interruption in its convex surface.</p><p><br /></p><p>I truly believe that the two most plausible explanations are that the glass was produced before the name was gouged in, either at the behest of an owner (the stone bears the genitive form of the name, which can mean equally by Pamphilos or belonging to him) or as a fraudulent &#039;enhancement&#039; before it was given to Louis.&nbsp;&nbsp; Another expert in the field, Gisela Richter, has written that engravers themselves were more like to place their names inconspicuously; owners, more blatantly.</p><p><br /></p><p>There are a couple more people in the field from whom I would love to have an opinion, but so far have not succeeded in getting any reply to my inquiries.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I also made inquiries to a couple of experts in ancient glass, asking only about the glass, not about its faithfulness to the amethyst.&nbsp; Both said there was no way they could be absolutely certain, but also that there was nothing about it to suggest it was not, part of the reasoning being that there were enough genuinely ancient glass gems around that there really was no gain to be had by faking them.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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