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

In the twenty-fourth volume of the Journal of this Society, Mr. Charles William King, well known for his knowledge and discernment in glyptics, drew attention to a remarkable intaglio of the Laocoön, preserved as a wax impression attached to a deed granting, pro hac vice, the advowson of the church of St. Anthony in Meneage to Thomas Arundell, Esq., by the Prior and Convent of the former alien priory of Tywardreth in Cornwall. This seal, or a gutta-percha copy of it, had been shown some fifteen years earlier to the author’s friend, Mr. Way, as well as to several distinguished sculptors and gem collectors. During the intervening years it was exhibited before more than one learned society in the hope of attracting attention and obtaining information regarding what appeared to be an otherwise unknown gem. The impression had been discovered among the records of a small conventual establishment near St. Austell Bay in Cornwall and seemed to preserve an early and skillfully executed representation of the famous Laocoön group, which had been unearthed in Rome only a few years before the date of the document and around the time that the prior named therein became the last prior of the house. The author had previously published a notice of the seal in a supplement to George Oliver’s Monasticon of the Exeter Diocese, to which King subsequently referred.