Featured Cameo Earrings Quiz

Why not?

 

Those are sweet, I could go for them also!

 

If nothing else, the way the wire is wrapped around itself is a technique that's became very popular fairly recently. It's possible it was done in earlier times, though.

 

i don't like the wire....

 

Apparently, I am so inured to the excess of auction titles, it never even occurred to me that the seller was suggesting anything more than, "hey these look like some old stuff I read about in a book once."

("in a book once" being an obvious allusion to an ehow.com page)

 

Seller, in the way of someone who does not deal in antiquities professionally, is telling you all she knows about this pair of earrings, which evidently she bought on the understanding they were Imperial Roman.

As @Debora said, she has not done her due diligence, not made any effort to gather support for her assertions, not even had the metal tested, simply says it is gold. She has accepted whatever was told to her by Private Collector #2.

We've put up several photos of Roman earrings with the same basic design. I think we can allow the earrings are Imperial Roman in style. The question becomes whether or not you believe they are in good condition for something over 1,500 years old. Why or why not?

Would still like to hear from @kyratango & @Any Jewelry

 

Well, I suppose the fact that they have kept all their dangly bits, that wire frame, and the stems intact for 1500 years is a minor miracle.

What I find myself wondering about is all of the wire in general. It looks like modern wire... and while I know there are examples of ancient jewelry with wire wrapping (my knowledge comes from a very brief and failed hobby, so it is suspect), I'm not sure the wire looked so perfectly like modern wire.

 

Komo doesn't like the wire either. I hadn't considered it until you guys pointed it, my attention was caught by a couple of other things.

 

I totally misread that as a comment about the style rather than the material.

Well, great minds and all.

 

I will have to do for now, I'm sure kyra will be along later.

I don't like the title. And why imperial, is their any proven imperial connection, either as a genuine pair or as replicas?

The bar pendant is known in Roman jewellery. So are cameos, pearls, and the use of gold of course.
Roman bar pendants suspended from cameos are unknown to me, though.
In Roman earrings the hooks would be attached to the upper pendant, soldered, so rigid.
Wrapping the wire back around itself is a very old technique in other parts of the world, but I don't know it from Roman jewellery either.
Not that I know all Roman jewellery, so I could be wrong about both the wire and
the bar suspended from the cameo. Those are just elements I haven't seen, and they don't seem right to me.

 

One more and then I've got errands to run (my apologies to anyone else who may have already mentioned this, lol).

I find myself wondering about the blobs keeping the beads on. That is all.

 

Blobs come in handy sometimes. These are Roman, with blobs.

 

Ah, good. 'Imperial Roman' is used all the time to indicate a time period. It would be applied to an iron soldier's ring if it came from that time. The ear wires look modern to me; hadn't thought about the directly attached vs. swinging from 2 linked rings. Interesting point. Even if the wires are a modern replacement to make the earrings wearable, would the pendant have a loop at the top for attaching them?

 

Will post this again to set against your questions:



There is a bar beneath the cameo from which pearls are suspended on very blobby 'wires'. (Can't tell from photo whether the blobs are attached to a wire or whether they are joined one to another, sort of like ball chain.) 'Granulation', decoration with applied tiny beads, was a standard jewellery technique. They were really, really good at blobs.

Note earring meets AJ's criterion of a fixed ear wire.

 

It is possible that the original hooks were broken and the remaining wire bent into a loop for a replacement set of hooks.
I have done that myself with a pair of 18th century earrings with broken 'rigid' hooks. It didn't bother me since 18th century earrings come with dangle hooks as well. I figured that if a future owner wants original looking rigid hooks, they would have to have them repaired anyway.

 

In this case the cameo is a decorative element in a repoussé plaque. The bar is soldered onto the repoussé plaque, not onto the mount of the cameo imo.

 

Would not want to put those wires through my piercings! Must have belonged to a woman whose ears were very stretched. Triangular shape really interesting.

 

This feels like a distinction without a difference to me. If you saw the central element, sans bar, dangles, ear wire, by itself, would you not consider the plaque the mount for the cameo, or the bezel only?

 

BTW, in the photos scoutshouse posted, the first pair look completely modern to me, with Roman inspiration. The second pair look right.

 

She is lurking. She has given likes to some of the posts in this thread, but so far refraining from comment.