There were two principal causes for the decline of fashion in the wearing of Cameos in England. The first arose from paucity of designs; and the second from the bad workmanship engendered by overwhelming orders being thrust upon a market in which only a limited number of operatives were engaged. With regard to the first cause, modern Cameo-cutters found no other models than those which had been handed down from the times of the ancient workers in gems. The cutters were copyists merely, not true artists, and modern taste was not satisfied with the representation of classic deities, however daintily wrought. There was no variety in the pose of figure, and the minutest detail was settled one or two thousand years before. Thus Apollo, Diana, Jupiter, Mercury, Sappho, and Venus were represented in precisely the same manner they had been a thousand times before, and the Cameo worn by a noble lady only differed in the quality of execution from that worn by a greengrocer’s daughter.

How the sudden demand for Cameos arose it is difficult to say, but orders were poured into Paris houses, and the little colony of Italian and French workers found themselves unexpectedly flooded with wealth. They were men possessed of most skilful hands, but very ignorant and untutored economists, and they worked hard for a portion of the week only, and too often shut themselves up in low wine-houses, and with cards and dominoes whiled away their time. Their wages were soon exhausted by drink and gambling; and when masters wanted workmen, they had first to settle the scores they had run up, for the payment of which the landlords detained them. The natural result followed, the quality of work deteriorated, and prices fell considerably; then houses undersold each other, and Cameos were cut at per dozen instead of per piece. When the Franco-German war commenced the Cameo trade was at its lowest point, and the outbreak of hostilities dispersed the major number of the workers.

Now that the Cameo is again coming into favour, there has been produced an imitation in some hard vitreous substance, which is constantly palmed off as the genuine article to careless purchasers. I bought two of these imitation Cameos in a jeweller’s shop for a few pence one day; they were both mounted and pinned for brooches. One, which was an imitation stone Cameo, bore Raphael’s angels—those lovely little figures which appear at the foot of the “Madonna and Infant Christ” now in Dresden. This measures one by one and a half inches. The other was an oval, measuring one and a half by one and three-quarter inches, bearing the head of Ceres, and was an imitation shell Cameo. In this piece the ground was coloured yellow, and in exact imitation of a real piece of shell, the colour increased in depth of shading from the face to the back of the head. The face only was white, and the ornaments about the hair, three ears of corn, five roses, five forget-me-nots, tress on the neck, and necklet of pearls were in exact imitation of the well-known face. I have seen cards on which half-a-dozen “Real Roman Cameos” were mounted exhibited in shop windows, and the price asked was 2s. 6d. each. These scandalous imitations of lovely ornaments will only be superseded when English workers send into the market the genuine articles.