Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

The entire Antiquers forum is backed up on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. The individual threads (like here for the Cameo thread c. Jun 2024) may not have perfect formatting, but it's there. It crawls and saves a new snapshot of pages in it pretty often (if you browse through the top level you'll note it's got different dates for when it last got to different pages), but you can also initiate a save of any site here.

It even has copies of my baby websites from the nineties. That said, nothing is forever so if the Internet Archive is removed (and it's been threatened before) then we could loose everything.

Times are different now so who knows how digital will fair or fail, but traditionally those who wrote books were the ones who enshrined knowledge. I believe someone suggested Bronwen write one a while back and she said this thread was it. But I do think an actual book, even if a vanity published one, is a good way to retain the scholarship that has been done here and have it easily referenced for future collectors and scholars. I have thought of it myself, but I'm a baby collector next to you two and anything I wrote would be mostly what I've learned here.

It's also a double edged sword...you publish something on a website or in a book and now you've made the competition for your collecting go up! Best to write when you think you're done and/or looking to raise the interest and prices to sell.

 

"Okay, put me on the payroll as a consultant for $1 in pay."

Museums surely invite guest curators or lecturers to look at the collection and archives. Now see, if you'd written a book on the subject... Actually, I've gone to lectures with people who just submitted papers. So okay, go back to school to pay for a masters and then submit a paper. Not hard at all.

 

I started taking photos of film/tv cameos and saving them like a weirdo. I think it's so interesting to see who in costumes cared, and who did not (usually because of budget).

The 1995 Pride and Prejudice mini series sent the mother out in this ponytail girl for every shot.


But HBO's Carnivale made sure they researched every aspect of their production, including this period appropriate gutta percha cameo on one of their leads that was her only necklace throughout the seasons.





And of course I've complained before about The Gilded Age wanting us to believe the most wealthy woman in all of NYC would wear anachornistic Headband Girl glass.

 

Thank you! I assumed it had a specific reference so it's great to know what it is.

Yeah the block in-between stumps me. No urn, no alter fire, no head herm... Gravestone is probably best but it's a strange choice to do decorative bands. Maybe he didn't want to leave it blank and thought that was close enough to words.

 

What a weird hairstyle...lacking the underside. Maybe a wig? It does definitely look like a portrait of a real person playing dress-up as a scholar. It always tickles me to know that our ancestors also thought it was fun to pretend to be from a time or place in their portraits, especially while on vacation.

Beautiful!! What an unusual carving for a conch shell and very pleasing to see! I'm jealous for sure. Your researching skills are ridiculous as always as well. Thank you for sharing.

 

Someone on another board was questioning the age on this cameo. They call it Victorian in the title but Edwardian in the listing. From the mounting I would think more Edwardian but the cameo could be earlier. And I wonder about the back, there seems to be a pattern, could it be some kind of signature?

What does everyone think?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1871349808...55-0&campid=5336393637&customid=&toolid=10049

Hopefully the link will work, but here are 3 of the photos:

 

I think that a piece I would own......

 

I see no reason to think this cameo of Hermes/Mercury is not contemporary with the mount. It is certainly not Victorian and, if Edwardian, more likely to be Edward VIII, not the VII, as is usually meant by that term.

In addition to the evidence given by the bail, hinge & clasp, the acid-etched signature is another 20th century touch. I'm seeing Gaio or Caio, possibly another letter after that. Can't tell whether the scratching above that also has meaning or...?

 

Thank you Bronwen, I will pass this info on to the person who was questioning it

 

Agreed with Bronwen of course. I watched this gent because he's rather nice even if not as old. He went for a decent price for sure!

 

Beyond decent! The presence of any gold is - and has been - jacking prices up, of course, but something more was going on here. The winning bidder, who has 0 feedback under that ID, clearly really, really wanted this piece, kept driving the price up, even though, since they put in one last bid just seconds before the auction ended, topping their own bid of 5 minutes earlier, they were able to be there at the finish line. What I don't get, though, is why their nearest competitors went as high as they did. Based on high feedback numbers, these were resellers, not collectors.

I have one of similar age, set in humble silver:

 

I somehow missed a couple of posts at the time of posting.

I always say that CameoTimes.com is my book, although, for various reasons, got stalled on it quite some time back. I have a ton of material collected, but lost the will to write it up in any systematic way. This has become the place where I share what I know. Being able to do it in dribs & drabs at least gets some of it out.

I feel personally responsible for more people knowing now to check for signatures. And I think I may have singlehandedly driven up the price for cameo portraits of private individuals.

On the other hand, my persistent efforts back in the day, seem to have led to most cameos of the Three Graces offered on eBay (& therefore probably on etsy, too) being correctly identified as such instead of as Three Muses, once a pervasive error, no doubt picked up from the Anna Miller book.

The worst, & funniest, thing that has happened, which I reported here at the time I saw it, was that someone, forget which social media, started showing off Schmoll pieces she had found, without mentioning how/where she learned to recognize them, and repeating in all seriousness something I said AS A JOKE, that Schmoll gave away a cameo with every purchase from his family's shop.

 

LOL!

Maybe two people had to have one Just Like Grandma's, or the reseller knew someone who wanted one Just Like Grandma's really badly.

 

Maybe it's the phenomenon of, 'Oh, it's signed. That means it must be valuable.' A mediocre work in a nice mount. I think another error some people make is to think that if a cameo is in a good setting, the cameo itself must be good.

 

The two should match in quality, but don't always.

 

A Neri by any other name...

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/...aign=auction-alert&utm_content=lot-image-link

"signed 'N cri. F. Rome' below the carving"

 

A Saulini cameo is coming up for auction, for anyone interested. Auctioneer has not noted signature in description but "Saulini F" clearly visible in photo:

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/...link&queryId=6b5272f904df990e0f8ec8b9dca71e3d



@nick nick Here is a chance to see how a Saulini performs through an auction house, although this one is not by Tommaso.

 

And another Neri flying under the radar:

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/...link&queryId=6b5272f904df990e0f8ec8b9dca71e3d

 

happy consignor if someone catches wise?

 

Expect assorted blasts from the past as I winnow down contents of a neglected inbox.

An odd threesome from the same auctioneer, Hannam's.

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/...aign=auction-alert&utm_content=lot-image-link

A Dolcini "unknown scholar", Raphael:




https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/...aign=auction-alert&utm_content=lot-image-link

A "Roman Emperor" aka Gabriel, the Annunciation Angel, sometimes given attributes of Apollo. Feel we have seen this signature before, but don't offhand recognize.




And, to show both that auction houses are not without humor & that a little learning is a dangerous thing:

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/...aign=auction-alert&utm_content=lot-image-link

"AN ANTIQUE SHELL CAMEO OF THE EMPRESS PATRICIUS HANNAMAS"