Visit my Squidoo lens where I have gathered together the knowledge that I have learnt and many of the links about Pocahontas.

Earlier this year I was asked to create a replica of the Cameo Brooch that was presented to Pocahontas while she was in London in 1616. The Pocahontas cameo brooch was presented to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in a special ceremony at the South Portico of the State Capitol building in Richmond, Virginia on May 3rd, 2007.

This ceremony was to mark the 400 year anniversary of the arrival of Captain John Smith and the colonists at Jamestown. This was the first permanent English settlement in North America.

I have learnt so much from this fascinating project about the importance of Pocahontas to both Indian and American history that I have been inspired to create a webpage on Squidoo to share my knowledge.

Transferring the design onto the stone

The design is marked onto the agate with ink. This will act as a guide to the carving and will be re-applied when needed.

Removing the agate material

The first stage of carving is to cut away the top layers around the profile. This reveals the darker background layer.

This darker layer is very important as it will provide the contrast needed to visually lift the cameo to create a sense of height.

Carving the form of the Portrait

The basic form of the cameo is carved. The carving looks very “blocky” at this stage. This is because I am very careful to leave extra material in all areas to allow for any changes at the final stage of carving the details.

The surface is quite rough as the goal here is to quickly remove all the material that is not needed to get to the finished profile.

Refining the detail

The stone is now carved with tools using finer grades of diamond powder to smooth and refine the surface.

The cameo was hand carved with diamond tools in a very similar method to how the original would have been made over 400 years ago.

These tools are made from steel and copper and are charged with diamond of various grits. There is a rough grind stage then a medium and smooth sanding to refine the carving.

The finished Agate Cameo Portrait of Pocahontas

The cameo is pictured here lit from behind. This shows the translucent nature of the agate stone.

The portrait carving at quite an advanced stage.

Further refinement will be added once the cameo frame has been made.

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.

Cutting the Cameo Blank from the agate

The agate is cut into an oval shape. At this stage the stone is considerably deeper than the finished cameo.

The darker layer shown towards the base of the stone will be used for the background of the portrait.

agate cameos , cameo jewelry , Gareth Eckley , gemstone carving , Jamestown , jewelry , Pocahontas , portrait cameos , Queen Elizabeth

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