Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

This was advertised as 19th century lava. Who knows, it's just very nice. The clasp is definitely modern or new.

 

If that's the palm of your hand she's in, could we see the back, please? From the one photo, could be 19th century lava, but could also be 20th century molded 'lava stone'. The soft lines urge me toward the latter.

If that is a quiver over her left shoulder, she would be Diana/Artemis.

 

I was wrong. This is an old clasp.

A better photo of the cameo

 

Is she actually yellow? Lavas came yellow, but the green looked weird.

 

Agreed a natural sunlight photo would be best.

I think that clasp and hinge is perhaps more 1900 or around-abouts. I really like her though. A nice mold or sculpt, whichever she is.

 

She has Diana's quiver but the hairstyle of Venus. I suspect the same factory that made her also made Days of the Week bracelets with this figure for Monday & her twin, sans quiver, for Friday.

I checked the reference I have that shows some examples of Tagliamonte's "lavastone" & this does not look like their work. However, I still think she looks molded, and the findings look 20th century.

Some, maybe most, lava pieces are dyed. I have seen 20th century ones that were green. This one looks like it may have some water staining.

 

He is stunning! It's amazing the rather "every day" appearance of the man, but then he's surrounded by such up-market sparkle. You think the stones were added later? The closed back and clawed collet are fairly old, no? So do you think him older than the setting, or the setting is pretending to have more age than it does?

Is the side of the setting silver? Then yes I would agree on your assessment of a washed back. A silver mount to match the stones makes sense.

I love the texture and interesting color layering of these pieces. And of course, the unique depictions. Speaking of...North African? I wonder what carving centers existed, if any.

Ugh how are you having to pay a tariff on something coming from the UK??? Everything I can find just says China and Hong Kong have lost their de minimis exemption. Or is this above the overall monetary threshold? I don't buy from abroad often but I don't want to be surprised when I do and they aren't making it easy to find out.

 

No, she's yellow. The green is my poor photography.

I'm now interested in knowing if it's mold or sculpted. I didn't know brooches were molded, except the cheap plastic ones. I thought they might have gotten the century off a little, but not that it's not hand done.

Now I'm very curious about the value of this, if it were molded. How much should a person pay for something like this, if it were molded? Until you mentioned it, I didn't even know there were molded cameos, except cheap ones.

I can see some stains on the back. That's never bothered me, it's old enough to have had some trouble.

 

This was well over the de minimis amount (d*mned diamonds!) but in the past it wouldn't have mattered because it is unquestionably antique & would have been exempt. Have to admit I have become rather obsessed with these, so was irrationally willing to pay stupid money, to a point. There was competition - on line auction format did not allow me to see anything about other bidders - and was holding my breath after my last bid, internally debating whether or not I was willing to go up another 200 GBP to get ahead again. Great relief when final bid went unchallenged. Since it was listed as hardstone, had to wonder whether other bidder(s) actually knew what they were bidding on.

Since age didn't matter to tariff, this was immaterial, but listing had this, correctly, I think, as George III in period, but on customs doc they put 'c. 1900'. (Previous regulations distinguished between antiques that are 100+ years old & antiques that are less than 100 years old. Huh?)

The stones are mine cut & sparkle nicely, 'lively', as the description said. The construction, with each stone setting hand crafted & all soldered one to another, compares well with other examples to be found on line for 'Georgian diamond pendant.' The edges of the diamond section are silver in appearance; only gold on the back.

The collar immediately surrounding the cameo is gold in color & shows no tarnish/oxidation, so could be the real thing. It is ornate enough that I have to wonder if it wasn't meant to be seen originally. I conjecture he was gussied up, something like this piece I showed 7 years ago, where a surfeit of garnets was added:

CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

As for the age of the cameo itself, I had to reconsider my original notion, based on the mounts I had seen them in, that this type dated to the turn of the 19th century when this one



turned up on a presentation item with sufficient information engraved on it to place it, in the auction house's reckoning, to 1550-65. There is so much consistency to these I feel the time & place of their making must have been fairly limited. Wouldn't be surprised if the mollusk involved & the way to make best use of it were trade secrets. It is such a superb material for cameos, surprising it is not still in use. The expense of surrounding it with diamonds also suggests that a previous owner believed this little cameo was something special.

 

For some points of comparison, see:

https://cameotimes.com/index.php/reference/materials-guide?start=3

and follow on to the next section, Limestone.

Could we have one or more photos showing the area around her hair from the side? Undercutting can be added by hand after removal from a mold, but its absence would be another factor suggesting a molded piece. Finding another that was identical line for line would be proof. I think a hand cut piece would have given more definition to the quiver & arrows.

 

Came across a nice garage sale where I got each of these cameos for $1.

• Top one is between 14k-18k gold unmarked (and yes I realize it's not a cameo).
• Left is 18k Marked, but the "band" appears to be corroding which makes me think only the setting is gold.
• Right tests negative for silver and negative for 10k gold - stumped on this one and would love to hear someone's thoughts.
• Bottom appears vermeil or pot metal. It seems the most detailed carving even though it's not gold!

 

The 20s cameo is set in 1920s costume metal. The filigree settings were everywhere, and came in gold, platinum and whatever-ium. The costume version is of course the most common. There were probably silver ones too.

 

Reading those links, the one thing that stands out to me is "The chisel scratches visible on the back attest to its hand manufacture." Even in the poor quality photo I posted, you can see the marks (or what look like the chisel marks on the back).
Here are a few more photos CU (I SUCK at taking photos).

 

Ugh I hate that they added fees to this. Everyone getting their pound of flesh. At least you are well happy with him and he is understandably so interesting and rare. The sparkle is nice too.

As early as 16th c! Well that would be wild. However, they do share a certain style that you do see on earlier cameos. I was thinking it was just the style in the area where they were carved, and possibly influenced by the depth of the shell used, but older cameos do all have a certain flat-er (?) look to them.

 

it's strange that the saint charm isn't marked since it's 20th c and should be, if gold. All of these look first half 20th c. to me. The large cameo has a pretty decent carving for the time period. Very pretty. You certainly can't beat $1/ea on these!

 

She looks carved to me but I'm not an expert on "lava" variations. A nice piece I think. Definitely eye-catching.

 

Last night found a piece in my display cabinet that contributes to the caved/molded lava discussion. Had to wait for today to photograph, & pix are not quite all I would have hoped. Still, think they illustrate my points fairly well.

The subject matter has a similarity with @Snowman Cometh 's lady. This one has a flower in her hair, so inspired by Flora, but also a quiver peeking over her left shoulder, like a Diana. Brown color & weight in hand are consistent with many lava pieces. Surface texture is that of fine grained solidified volcanic ash. Findings on the back, T hinge & C clasp, look 19th century. The mount was black when I pulled her out. Some time & elbow grease with a jewellery wipe showed her to be in a simple silver mount with twisted gold wire decoration, a common style.

Before posting the link, I skimmed through the article & rather cringed when I read this, but decided to post it anyway, Will have to do some editing there. A complete absence of such scraping with be supporting evidence for a verdict of a molded piece. However, since it is something easily added, by itself it is extremely weak as evidence that something is hand carved. Its presence or absence alone proves nothing. My Flora-Diana has even more scraping, scoring & gouging than the photo picks up. Nonetheless, I believe her to be molded.

Even under magnification I can't really tell what's going on with the dark patch on the back, whether it is an area where the brown has been scraped away, something dropped on top, or...? I do know that despite having a lumpy look, it has a smoother, glassy feel to it when I run the edge of a fingernail across it, not the graininess of the brown. A fingertip cannot discern any change of depth between the two areas, but it looks more to me as though the brown has been scraped or simply worn away.

What I see clearly that is a strong argument for a molded piece are the small blobs of excess material visible around the neckline of her gown and under her chin. Her face & neck are so smooth, a craftsman surely would not have left these places unfinished:



What I am looking for in snowman's pix is any area that would have made it impossible to get the piece out of a rigid mold and that could not have been created by some hand finishing post-mold. So far, not seeing any.

 

That's beautiful.

Until you mentioned that my piece could be molded, I did not know that lava brooch cameos were ever molded. That article you sent me to, only shows photos of handmade brooches, when it gets to the molded piece, it's a plaque.

Is it possible that brooches are hand carved and things like plaques are molded? I've searched for molded lava cameos and can't find a single photo of an absolute 100% molded cameo brooch. I could be wrong. But, I think both of ours are hand carved. Either way, they're both really cool.

 

The spots look like drops to me...maybe dye used from when they color them, or ink?

It would not surprise me if some lava cameos are molded, sculpted, and/or carved.

The way some look to me I have thought them more like a clay. Maybe using ground limestone to make a paste. In which case you could start with a mold, but also sculpt, and then add carving details to both.

The grains you point out remind me of the Tassie-style glass cameos, but those backs are different so I do not think these with tool marks or the same. Here's one I have that is clearly trying to look like a lava cameo, but is a Tassie-style glass composition. Note the grains:



The back of it is a overall grainy texture.

 

...was written by Bronwen. It's her well-researched and extremely helpful website.