Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

Any relation to Pirate Queen Ann Bonny?

 

Yes, Blue Ribbon Rarities (Numismatics). I have dealt with them and their listings before. I think they are using AI to write their listings now. They have been buying a serious number of cameos from a single seller who lives in NYC.

 

GOOD ONE!!!

 

I bought an auction lot of 15 cameos a while back. There are a few from the lot that this group would find interesting.

Here is one of three that look to be 16-17th century. Gerhard Schmidt examined them and agrees on the age (unless they are very convincing fakes).

This one is my favorite of the bunch. I believe it to be Zephyrus, the west wind, based on the butterfly wings in his luxurious hair. I found multiple paintings and engravings showing Zephyrus with butterfly wings, but most of the time Zephyrus is a young man (no beard). I have found a couple of engravings showing just the head of Zephyrus blowing and with his beard. I continue to search for more evidence to confirm his identity. The cameo is small-about 3/4 inch tall and is in a lovely translucent agate. I am going to have it set as a ring. Unfortunately. One of his wings is chipped.

Thoughts on the cameo subject's identity?

 

Hypnos.

 

I'm in no position to argue with Gerhard Schmidt, but the stone looks to me to be the speckled agate that seems to have been popular at the turn of the 19th century, Over the years I have developed the impression that there was a lot of activity in that period trying to supply the great demand for antique engraved gems. I think this one of mine is Georgian meant to look earlier:

 

How interesting! This whole discussion thread is interesting, but somehow I felt this one deserved a comment.

 

This Odysseus is similar. (Not mine.) And this is why Pepper & I both have our eyes on this one:

 

When you can, let's see the other two. May add context for this one.

 

As always, Bronwyn, you supply food for thought. Gerhard could not confirm they were 16-17th century, and he said they could be fakes made in the 19th made to look older. So you and he share a gut feeling that could be entirly correct.

But whatever his age, I really enjoy this cameo. There is speckling as you rightly pointed out- I just didn't know how to best describe it.

I don't have pics of the other 2 and I am not home at the moment. But I will post them as soon as I get home at the end of the week.

 

I'm still looking for a cameo of Paris that U Penn holds, which I have in my files without a link to it. But in looking have seen these 2, which they date anywhere 1700 - 1850:



And this one they put to the 18th century:



While this Psyche is 'probably' 17th century:



I imagine they accepted Maxwell Sommerville's descriptions when they accepted the bequest, so don't know if they have ever been reexamined.

 

On the other hand, I expected this one to be described as Renaissance, and it is:

 

excellent carving !!!!!
what stone is that ?

 

I think it would be put in the catchall category of jasper, which covers any opaque microcrystalline quartz. If it's translucent we call it chalcedony. Jaspers can be a solid color, striped, spotted, jumbled, pretty much any color or color combo. Some get named for the place where they occur. Some colors of chalcedony have their own name: dark brown sard; orangey-red cornelian/carnelian; green chrysoprase. The banded agate we are accustomed to seeing used for cameos is chalcedony, often with a dyed background layer. When it has not been dyed, it looks like this cameo of Venus, and is called chalcedonyx:

 

Ah, found the U Penn cameo I was looking for, although I guess the lack of a beard leads them to identify it as an Amazon rather than as Paris. It is also chalcedonyx, with some speckling on the Phrygian cap. They show it against both black & white:



Another one they place as 1700 - 1850.

 

OK, this one Penn does ID as Graeco-Roman. Beardless, so Psyche:

 

This is being represented as lava & will be sent for authentication before going to buyer. But what will the authenticator do? Clearly not lava:



I don't report "natural material", as the euphemism goes, when it is genuinely antique, but this is clearly modern Asian. When did there stop being a button for Report This Listing? Could swear I have seen one in the last few days.