French Kisses & French Antique Cameo

After the French perfumes and the French kiss? Seal it with a French Antique Cameo!

You can view Aurora, goddess of the dawn portrayed on this antique cameo beauty here as she leads the sun god Apollo on his chariot at break-o-day, bringing-in daylight to the world.

You will not find techniques on how to French kiss on this page, or how to get flecks of gold from a river but you will learn about the mysterious method of French Antique Cameo making in the early 1900s, in Tours, in France.

In Tours in France, there existed an extremely rare kind of cameo jewelry making, that began many hundreds of years ago. As many people know, Tours is a picture-perfect, quaint, historic town with a population of around 130,000. Tours is located approximately 135 miles southwest of Paris.

The superior cameo of high quality that was produced in Tours, was due to the unusual method of of its making, which is no longer practiced today because of the extremely long length of time it takes to produce one of these cameo beauties.

Let's retrace the history of the cameo made in Tours back to the magic of a river that winds itself around two rivers in the city.

The River Loire and the River Cher both flow through the town and the cliffs above the River Cher between Tours and Savonnieres are lined with prehistoric grottos. (A grotto is a small cave, usually of great natural beauty or unusual in appearance). This French antique cameo is formed by the natural action of water dripping in the grottos.

The rate of stalagmite growth varies according to the amount of dripping water, the limestone type, and the evaporation rate of the carbon dioxide. At best, it is about 7/16 inch per 100 years!

At its fastest, the thickest cameo known to be produced in this manner would have taken at least 125 years to form! An Antique cameo in the truest sense.

No craftsman who created a matrix and placed it upon a post would live to see the fruits of his labor so very few people had such conviction.

Basically, a matrix (mold) was carved intaglio to give the proper shape or form to material introduced into it. The matrices were made from papier mache-and were placed upon short posts in places where water was dripping from the ceiling.

After a number of years, they were filled with the lime and minerals in the water, and at long last, the cameo were formed. A finishing touch-up to the carving was done to reach their final beauty, producing a genuine Antique cameo of priceless value.

References:

1. Wikipedia

2. Museo Archeologico Nazionale ci Napoli

3. Zeitner, J.C., Lapidary Journal 'Color Basic to Carving' February, 1988.

4. Schumann, W., Gemstones of the World, Newly Revised & Expanded Third Edition, Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. New York. (First Edition, 1976)

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