Gothic Accessories- Cammeos

Many goths, especially those who love Victorian, Elisabethan and Edwardian era, surely love Cammeos (or Cameos) and wear them as jewelry!

Often found on chockers, necklaces, earrings, rings or as a simple ornament on lingerie for example!

This is my cameo chocker necklace *-* I also own a pair of black cammeo earrings but I don't have a picture of them.

Uhm, Yes that's me..BallerinaDark xD Not the best picture but here's a little sneek peak of the creator and owner of Gothic Divine Magazine!

Anyway let's get back to the topic..

What is a Cammeo?

Cameo is a method of carving an object such as an engraved gem, item of jewellery or vessel made in this manner. It nearly always features a raised (positive) relief image; contrast with intaglio, which has a negative image. Originally, and still in discussing historical work, cameo only referred to works where the relief image was of a contrasting colour to the background; this was achieved by carefully carving a piece of material with a flat plane where two contrasting colours met, removing all the first colour except for the image to leave a contrasting background.

Ancient and Renaissance cameos were made from semi-precious gemstones, especially the various types of onyx and agate, and any other stones with a flat plane where two contrasting colours meet; these are "hardstone" cameos. In cheaper modern work, shell and glass are more common. Glass cameo vessels, such as the famous Portland Vase, were also developed by the Romans.

Modern cameos can be produced by setting a carved relief, such as a portrait, onto a background of a contrasting colour. This is called an assembled cameo. Alternatively, a cameo can be carved by the traditional, but far more difficult, method directly out of a material with integral layers or banding, such as (banded) agate or layered glass, where different layers have different colours.

Sometimes dyes are used to enhance these colours.

The most used colors are white on black, white on blue and white on pink/red, but you can also find white on green cammeos..but actually you can make them in any color now! These are just the most common.

Today for gothic fashion you can even find corsets with big kind of cammeo on!! *-*



Some modern revisitation of cammeos:






Lovely aren't they? and you can find them at normal jewel /accessories shops like Bijou Brigitte or Accessorize at very low price!