Cameos and Fakes

Apart from Kooky, I am still looking at cameos. Romy brought in a very pretty deep carved cameo of a bacchante, white with a pink tint. I had first thought this was ivory, slightly coloured after carving, but on Googling for a bit, we decided it may possibly be angel skin coral, which would make it quite rare and desirable. She may take it to an expert for an opinion.

Reading about Prince Poniatowski, who inherited 154 antique engraved gems. He added another 3000 to this collection, carved by four carvers in antique style in subjects suggested by him. However, instead of their own signatures he had them signed in the names of ancient or imaginary artisans. On his death, Christies had a seventeen day sale of these and the forgeries began to be detected. This brought the reputation and price of cameos down considerably, though ironically, it seems that they were eventually acknowledge as extremely fine works in their own right, and there is a market for them as collector's items. There seems to be a lot of fakery in the cameo world. Even shell cameos have been faked, so I have checked mine carefully.