Cameo

This ring was my mothers, which she recently gifted to me. It is beautiful and is quite sentimental to me because it has a very beautiful story to go with it.

Since a little girl my mother had a massive obsession with rings. She came from a very humble upbringing and one of my favourite stories is how her father made her a ring by cutting out the centre of a penny.

During the 1960s my koro (grandfather) was a street sweeper in Gisborne and he found this cameo ring on the footpath. He handed it in to the local police and if it wasn't claimed in two weeks he could keep it. So after two weeks passed he was given the ring to keep, and he of course gave it to my mother. She remembers this clearly, she had never seen a ring like this before and was absolutely ecstatic to have received it.

My mother, 1963 - age 16. She tells me she is actually wearing the cameo ring in this picture but it is hard to see. 

Leaping about 50 years forward to 2012, I was helping my mother clean out her drawers when we stumbled upon the heavily tarnished looking cameo ring. She told me the story which intrigued me even more. So feeling like I was on a bit of an Antiques Roadshow mission, I took it into the jewelers to get polished and also find out a bit more about it. They looked at it and said it was copper, then polished it and said, hmmmm it may be silver. So I needed another opinion and took it to another place where they said it was stainless steel and were not sure if it was a real cameo. Then they did another polish of it and realised that actually it was gold and it had a strange marking on it making it confusing for jewelers to decipher. What they believe is that this was a sample ring that a jewelry designer would have taken from store to store to get more orders and dropped it on his travels. In the end I'm not sure if it is real, but I don't actually care. It's beautiful and means a lot to me now.

So this experience has inspired a cameo themed post, and I was impressed by how many lovely and elegant cameo interior accessories and artwork I found.

Image courtesy of Marcus Design

Image courtesy of Marcus Design

You could even have a cameo themed wedding! Image courtesy of
  My 1 wedding

This is my favorite find - the ultimate his and hers dressers/sinks - Image courtesy of Design Folio

Image courtesy of Marcus Design

Image courtesy of Marcus Design

Go to What Delilah Did for a cute Cameo cross stitch pattern to try

This Victorian fashion trend originally popularized by royals is having a bit of a revival thanks to some high profile fashion designers. Check Lanvin's pre-fall show below and check Fashionising.com's latest post on the resurgence of the cameo jewelry trend. So raid your mothers or grandmothers jewelry box, you never know what you may find....

From Lanvin pre-fall 2012 - Courtesy of Fashionising.com