Yes, don't need exact date, just some anchor in time to help figure out when its original owner lived. I can't articulate this in any coherent way, it's just a gut feeling stemming from my experience of Victorian & Georgian cameo jewellery. I think it was pretty old when Grandmother inherited it. My sense is that it is Georgian, not Victorian, but as has come up on another thread, I have been known to be wrong, & this is, as they say, out of my wheelhouse. Would have to go at least 2 generations back to get there, quite possibly 3. Too bad no clear provenance got handed down with it.
I'm always doing this, forgetting to put in the quotation I am replying to: 'I believe the symbol that you are not sure about is a plumb square' Thanks - think that is probably correct as it would be another very fundamental mason's tool.
Thank you. By way of further information ( although it’s not really relevant ) my grandmother was house keeper to the Andrews family ( yes the ones who built the titanic ). Northern Ireland is a small place and I guess ( as Some have suggested ) asking the lodges over there would be a good idea. Thanks for your very useful input.
Following up with @say_it_slowly 's post, I found this page that transcribes the gravestone inscription for Richard O'Prey, the servant of the Earl of Belfast. It starts about 2/3 of the way down this page and is quite lengthy. Apparently written on a separate stone near the burial monument: http://www.eddiesextracts.com/books/silentland/silentland05.html And I now have a question about the name on the cube. Any chance that the second letter before his last name is an R instead of an E? Because of the angle of that particular letter I'm not positive. It does look more like an E than an R but I see grooves that make me wonder. The other letter E's on the cube are much more obvious. But it may just be the angle of the light falling on it.
