gems, engraved gems, agate, chalcedony, quartz, cameos, itaglios, turquoise, sard, onyx, coral, amethyst, glyptic

A recent article in this Journal was devoted to a survey of the minerals that have been invested with different degrees of intrinsic value, and have served for the purposes of ornament among various races of mankind. While seeking to trace the history of precious stones from this point of view, we endeavoured in particular to identify those among them which have been described and alluded to in classical authors. Our purpose now is to perform a similar office by means of the art which these imperishable materials have handed down to us in the form of gems; and though we might easily fall into the error of exaggerating the importance of this subject as a department of archaeology or aesthetics, archaeologists and students of art seem in our day, or at least in our country, to have gone to the other extreme, and to have somewhat undervalued the works of the gem-engraver. By the word “gem” we understand not only the precious material of the stone, but the combination of that material with a work of art either cut in intaglio into the hard and grainless texture of the mineral, or standing in relief as a cameo upon it. The shell cameos with which Italy now floods the world were almost, if not entirely, unknown to the Greek or Roman artist of ancient times; for the Greek and Roman artist sought in the sard or onyx a material at once imperishable and beautiful, and of a texture to receive, with difficulty indeed, but not with rough resistance, the incisions of an adamantine tool. The soft shell cameo needs no such tool, but possesses no such imperishability. It came into vogue during the cinquecento period, but was then only rarely used, and is chiefly known in the works of a few artists who availed themselves of this very soft material to engrave in microscopic fashion a multitude of figures within the oval of a small Cypraea shell. The vast number of cameos now worked in Italy, on the West Indian Strombus shell and on the Cassis rufa of the west coast of Africa, are a commerce of this century.