Oval Portrait Cameo Pin with Ribbon Designed Bezel in 14k Yellow Gold

The subject here faces right, and almost everything worth looking at is above her ear. Her hair is dressed high and worked into separate ringlets, each curl cut free enough to throw its own shadow, with a small earring carved at the lobe and a spray of flowers and one long leaf rising at her shoulder. Drapery gathers below. The gold surround is the record's ribbon design: a border of overlapping domed loops running the full oval, with a twisted rope wire set just inside them, so the frame has two different textures before you reach the carving. On the reverse a hinged stem runs the width with a catch at one end. 12.80 grams of 14k.

Curls are the part of this work that separates a good carving from a cheap one. A flat wave can be scratched in; a ringlet has to be undercut, meaning the tool goes in behind the curl to free it from the head, and it has to do that inside a pale layer only about a millimetre thick. Go a hair too far and the dark ground shows through as a bruise in the middle of her hair. Count the separate curls above her ear and that is the number of times someone chose to keep going. The looped border is a second trade entirely, soldered up by a goldsmith after the carver was finished — two different benches, one piece. Who divides labour that carefully for something the size of a thumb?