I found this cameo at an antique flea market. The chip looks conchoidal to me, again suggestive of stone.Īny ideas at all on when and where this might have been made? I'm pretty sure it's neither ancient nor particularly modern (i.e., not 20th cen.) but could have come from any time in between. There is some damage to the top of the black figure's helmet, evident in the oblique view. Under the loupe, there appear to be striations in the white and orangeish layers that are more suggestive of stone to me than shell or similar material. One of the attached photos, taken through a loupe, shows the layers. It's unclear whether the top three layers are just stuck to the carnelian with adhesive, and thus were carved of a different material, or the carnelian is actually not, and this was all carved from one piece of agate or chalcedony.
Both figures sit atop a third layer that is kind of translucent and pale orange in color, and in turn that all sits atop a rectangular piece of what I think is carnelian, which is what is actually set into the ring. The white figure is indistinct other than it appears to be male rather than female. The top figure, in black, is what I think is supposed to be a Roman soldier, but the style of his dress looks to me more like what someone in, say, the Renaissance would have imagined a Roman soldier to look like. The cameo shows two male figures in profile facing right, carved in the "capita jugata" style where the profiles overlap.
It's definitely hand-carved, and the workmanship is very nice although not exceptionally fine. The cameo, pictured here, is so intriguing that I opted for it rather than plain onyx. He said it was originally set in rose gold, the setting was to be melted down for the gold, and he saved the cameo. My plan was to have the jeweler just replace the missing stone with a piece of polished onyx, but he offered me instead a cameo that had come from another man's ring that was just about the perfect size. Recently, I took it to a jeweler to have it repaired so I could wear it, as the setting itself is impressive. The stone fell out within a year and he never had it repaired or wore it again. It was bought for him by my grandmother on their first wedding anniversary in 1942 and originally contained an onyx or hematite carved in intaglio with a Roman soldier's head in profile. I've had an Art Deco man's ring setting in 10K gold for years that belonged to my grandfather.
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