Making the new Pocahontas Cameo for the Queen

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Making the new Pocahontas Cameo for the Queen - Part 1

July 11th, 2007

I was first contacted by a benefactor, whose name is to be kept secret for now, in March as she wanted to create a replica of the Pocahontas Cameo Brooch to present to the Queen during her visit to Virginia, USA in May. The benefactor was very involved in the design of the cameo brooch.

My visit to Jamestown, Virginia to study the original Pocahontas Cameo.

The staff at the Jamestown settlement museum were very generous in allowing the benefactor and myself almost 4 hours to study the cameo brooch of Pocahontas first hand.

I carefully examined the cameo to learn how the original had been carved over 400 years ago ! We discussed if any changes would be made with the new carving.

I felt that it was important that the portrait should be more American Indian in appearance to make it a more faithful image of Pocahontas.

The benefactor suggested that the cameo should be set with natural freshwater seed pearls and be made from a white precious metal. We decided to use Palladium, one of the Platinum group metals and this gave a clean, modern feel to the piece.

Finding the right agate for the carving.

I needed to find a stone that matched the colors used for the original cameo given to Pocahontas. Most layered agate used for modern portraits is enhanced with aniline dyes to create strong blacks, blues or red-brown layers and bleached to create a pure white layer for the carving layer.

I managed to source a natural un-dyed Brazilian layered agate for the portrait carving from Horst Schmidt at A.Ruppenthal Ltd in Germany. This stone had a light grey top layer and a darker brownish grey base layer.

The top layer was not as white as in the original cameo brooch, however, we felt that the subtle color and the translucency of the agate would give a wonderful quality to the new cameo portrait.