Jewelers Of Italy

(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:

5. Cameo Cutting

Another form of pendant was the cameo, cherished for its beauty rather than its luck-bringing qualities. Every since the time of Alexander the little cameo had been growing in popularity, and during the reign of Augustus cameo portraits were all the rage. Many portraits of the Emperor were cut one a stone imported from Arabia, an agate with strongly market layers or parallel bands of black and white known as onyx. If, instead of with black, the white layer of agate is contrasted with bands of red (carnelian) or chestnut brown (sard), the stone is known as sardonyx.

When cutting a picture on banded agate the lapidary took full advantage of the different layers of color, and the subtle variations of tone resulting from the degree of thinness to which he cut the light, translucent layer. With repeated strokes of a fine chisel the craftsman would chip away the dark stratum of the stone, leaving the design to stand in relief—a light silhouette against a dark field. This process left a more or less uneven surface, and the work was carried further by aid of a drill, a wheel, and an engraving tool. Finally the stone was carefully polished.

So skilled were the engravers that by utilizing as many as five layers, or zones of color, they could carve elaborate groups of figures with drapery, flesh, hair and ornaments each in its own appropriate shade of color. One cameo masterpiece shows Augustus and Roma enthroned. Before them stands a victorious prince and in a lower zone of color are groups of captives and Roman soldiers.

Sometimes the dark, bluish gray upper layer of an onyx was cut intaglio, the figure or design appearing in the underlying white layer. It was a two colored intaglio, and a gem engraved in this manner was known as a nicolo.

Glass too was often used by the Roman cameo cutter, but unlike agate, the glass background of the design could not be removed with a chisel. All cutting of the brittle substance had to be done by grinding with an abrasive. For this, a small wheel reinforced with emery powder was used.

The most famous came work in glass is the Portland vase, that ancient urn found about the middle of the sixteenth century in a sarcophagus near Rome. The figures that encircle its maple sides are cut in the outer layer of milk-white glass, their background being the rich blue stratum of the vase. In some portions of the design the white glass is ground down to such a degree of thinness that the underlying blue glass shows through, causing the white to appear the color of pale cobalt.

Many of the old cameos in sardonyx have a small hole drilled through them and this has led to the surmise that the hole was intended to admit thread so the cameo could be sewed, as an ornament, onto clothing. According to Pliny, however, the hole only went to prove that the engraved stone had first been used as a bead in its native land, India. When it fell into the hands of the Roman lapidary he changed the banded bead into cameo.

Jewelers Of Italy (continued)