gems, glyptic, engraved gems, agate, cameo, intaglio, shell, ancient gems, Rome, Greece, ancient jewelry, rings

The cameo and intaglio gems discussed here have the virtue of being newcomers to the Museum of Fine Arts in the last several years. The last discussion of these semi-precious stones and glass pastes was in the MFA Bulletin No. 323, in the spring of 1963. There the collection formed by the late Dr. L. Lahut Uzman of the Harvard Medical School was described on the occasion of its acquisition by the Museum. Dr. Uzman’s eighteen gems were a sort of cultural by-product of his collection of Byzantine gold coins, masterpieces selected by him over a generation to form a tasteful comprehension of this vital branch of ancient glyptic art. The gems shown here were purchased or accepted as gifts with a view to strengthening a collection famous universally for possessing many of the Duke of Marlborough’s stones, sold at auction near the end of the last century, and most of the cameo and intaglio stones that Edward Perry Warren kept at his famed intellectual retreat, Lewes House in Sussex near England’s Channel coast. By happy accident the gems and pastes in this selection from recent acquisitions form, like Dr. Uzman’s pieces, another conspectus in miniature of gem engraving in the Classical and Neo-Classical worlds, that is from 500 B.C. to the age of Napoleon.