CAMEO-CUTTING.
The best American artist in cameo-cutting has recently, says a contemporary, been interviewed upon his costly art. He was found pounding up diamonds with a pestle and mortar. This, he explained, was not the only costly part of cameo-making, which takes eyesight, a great deal of time and patience, and years of experience. Then the onyx stones, from which the cameos are made, are expensive, costing sometimes as much as fifty dollars. The choicest have a layer of cream-coloured stone on a dark chocolate-coloured base. But many persons like the red, orange, black, or shell pink stones just as well. They are found in the Uruguay Mountains and in Brazil. The onyx is a half-precious stone of the quartz family. It is taken to Europe, and cut into oval or oblong shapes, and Americans have to pay ten per cent. duty to get it through the custom-house. The cameo-cutter turned to his lathe by the window, and, rubbing some of the diamond dust, which he had mixed with sperm oil, on the end of a small drill, began his work. He was making for a cabinet piece a large cameo, two by two and a half inches, one of the largest ever cut, of an old gentleman in Germany, whose portrait was placed before him. ‘I have one hundred and twenty-five of these soft iron drills,’ he remarked; ‘they are made soft so as to catch the diamond dust, which is the only thing that will cut a cameo. A cameo is indestructible, except you take a hammer and smash it. It is an old art, and was practised by the Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians. Dr Schliemann found some cameos in good preservation that were probably three thousand years old. It takes several weeks to cut a large piece like this. Afterwards, it has to be polished with tripoli, first being smoothed with emery and oil, using the lead instruments similar to those for cutting. It is easier to cut a profile than a full-face portrait. Some people prefer intaglios, in which the portrait is depressed instead of raised. They are made on sards and cornelians, the former being a dark-reddish brown, and the latter a clear red. They are harder to make than cameos. I have to take impressions of the work in wax as I go on. I usually cut portraits from photographs, but sometimes have done them from life, and also from casts of dead persons.’ Among portraits which the artist had cut are those of ex-President Hayes, Mrs Hayes, William Cullen Bryant, Bayard Taylor, Peter Cooper, and others. A large cameo copy of Gerôme’s ‘Cleopatra before Cæsar’ was valued at fifteen hundred dollars.