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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bronwen, post: 2713241, member: 5833&quot;][USER=16501]@Van_Poperin[/USER]&nbsp; Does your sulfur have a number written by hand on the collar?</p><p><br /></p><p>The go-to source:</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/gems/tassie/default.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/gems/tassie/default.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/gems/tassie/default.htm</a></p><p><br /></p><p>The impressions are organized in broad time periods &amp; then subjects within those periods.&nbsp; It&#039;s an old &amp; awkward site to work with, you can&#039;t go back &amp; forth very freely.&nbsp; You might start viewing plates from the beginning, Gem #1 &amp; switching to the text if you see one you would like to know more about.&nbsp; I usually select 4 for the Image Size; 3 is too small for me &amp; you can enlarge just by clicking on the plate.</p><p><br /></p><p>Gem 507 reminds me of yours.&nbsp; There&#039;s a glitch &amp; you have to ask for a different number - 500 works - to see the associated text for that one.</p><p><br /></p><p>ΙΑΩ is common on magical gems, often written in an older style with the Ω written like the lower case ω, only larger.&nbsp; You&#039;ll notice that almost none of the letters on yours are written with curved lines.&nbsp; EUAIEAEIOEOAE is EVAIHAHIWHWAE.&nbsp; (If this is a discrete string, if I have it correctly where it starts &amp; ends, it may matter that there are 13 letters.)&nbsp; It&#039;s in archaic Greek, which is really out of my wheelhouse.</p><p><br /></p><p>A note on Grand Tour.&nbsp; The Grand Tour was properly the tour of Europe a well-cultivated young man of the 18th century would take with his tutor &amp; perhaps a few other students to finish off their education.&nbsp; We use it very loosely now.&nbsp; By the second half of the 19th century it would be just as accurate to call them Cook&#039;s Tours, the travelers &amp; their purpose quite changed.&nbsp; James Tassie was by far the biggest producer of these gem impressions.&nbsp; Most of them were bought in Britain by Britons, who collected them avidly by the hundreds &amp; even thousands.&nbsp; I do not know whether ones made in Italy tended to stay in Italy or frequently came back to Britain as souvenirs, but there is no reason to assume without evidence that a loose piece like this one was acquired on a Grand Tour.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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