When I was a little girl, I remember sitting on my grandmother’s bed while she showed me her brooches and other trinkets. My favorite was always her cameo earrings and brooch. I'm still amazed at how something so beautiful and delicate as a lady’s head could be carved on top of a stone. While searching for information on cameos, I was surprised to discover that the word “cameo” applied to more than just a lady’s head on a piece of jewelry.

Cameo is a method of carving where the carving is raised up and the background lowered. It also refers to engraved gems, jewelry, even vases or other vessels made in the same raised way. Some of the cameo objects (including glass ones) can be placed all the way back to 25 BC during the Roman Empire. The Romans loved to use the gods and goddesses, emperors, warriors, and eagles as the main subjects for their cameos.

Cameos were very popular during the early Renaissance and again in the 18th through 19th century. Many portraits of the time can be seen with Queen Victoria and other ladies wearing a cameo at their throats or on their bodice.

Today modern cameos are carved into agates by the use of lasers instead of by hand. As the agate is carved, the layers are dyed to give the shading effect desired. Other items carved today can be found in many coastal tourist towns..... seashells. Beautiful pictures of fish, birds, and animals adorn many of these shells along with the name of the coastal state.

A very small collection of cameos will be on temporary display at the Jakin Library & Museum.

We are open 12 noon – 4 p.m. on Wednesday – Friday. We would love for you to come and visit.

Some books you may enjoy are as follows:

Nowhere to Run by Mary Jane Clark: As medical producer for television's highly-rated morning news program, Annabelle Murphy makes her living explaining horrific conditions to the nation. So when a KEY News colleague dies with symptoms terrifyingly similar to those of anthrax, she knows the panic spreading through the corridors of the Broadcast Center is justified. As one death follows another, Annabelle's co-workers look to her for assurance, but she finds it hard to give comfort. To her, the circumstances surrounding the infections suggest diabolical murders. And when the authorities lock down the Broadcast Center with the identity of the killer still unknown, neither the victims nor the murderer can escape.

Worst Case by James Patterson: One by one, children of New York's wealthiest are taken hostage. But the criminal doesn't crave money or power -- he only wants to ask the elite if they know the price others pay for their luxurious lifestyles. And, if they don't, he corrects their ignorance -- by killing them. To Detective Michael Bennett, it becomes clear that these murders are linked and must be part of a greater, more public demonstration. With the city thrown into chaos, he is forced to team up with FBI agent Emily Parker, and the two set out to capture the killer before he begins his most public lesson yet -- a deadly message for the entire city to witness.

A Man for Temperance by Gilbert Morris: In 1850, Temperance Peabody, age 32, is a plain yet beautiful woman who has yet to know the thrill of romantic love. Raised in the Oregon territory where her parents established a strict religious colony, she was never allowed to have a suitor but now longs to have a family of her own. After her parents die and a cholera epidemic wracks the colony, Temperance feels called by God to take the surviving orphaned children back East to their extended families. But the only man available to accompany her on the dangerous journey is Thaddeus Brennan, a hard-edged drifter with good reasons of his own to get out of town. Despite the mismatch of Temperance’s purity with Thad’s hot temper, heavy drinking, and distaste for kids, the intensities of their trek help the two find common ground, perhaps enough on which to build a lasting relationship. But life and love are unpredictable. And when another man and woman join the journey, and a shock awaits two of the orphans, this hearty story of faith and new desires duly follows.

Prefer a biography or true stories? We have lots to choose from including Kitty Kelly's Oprah and The Royals. Here is a true story that I thoroughly enjoyed, The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom. It's the story of how Cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz escaped with six others from a Russian camp and made their way through mountains and a desert to freedom.