182 



By the Rev. W. P. Shoet, 

 (Read before the Society at Shaftesbury, August, 1884.) 



^HE subject 1 have been asked to address you on is so large, 



1^1 and touches on so many others, that I trust all will pardon 

 me if" this paper seems, to any expert very sketchy and inadequate, 

 to the majority a little dull. I propose to say a little about the 

 materials employed, something of the methods used at different 

 periods, something of the styles of different nations, and, lastly, 

 something of the last dying efforts of classical work, as found in 

 the class of seals, amulets, &c., known as gnostic. 



And first we must remember that the history of gem-cutting, or, 

 at least, intaglio-cutting, is really the history of art in all ages. 



The pre-historic cave-dweller in Auvergne, who scratched with a 

 flint chip his rude pictures of mammoths, and horses, and buffaloes, 

 on a fragment of slate, was as truly an intaglio-cutter as the Greek 

 artist, who sketched, so to say, with a splinter of diamond on sard 

 or carbuncle his own or another's lovely conceptions of gods, or 

 heroes, or men. 



And with the very dawn of history we find the art full grown. 

 Those Chaldsean cylinders of hard stone, carved at least four thousand 

 years ago, though quaint and full of mannerism, are as true and 

 accurately worked as any modern artist could wish to produce ; and 

 if we turn to Egypt, we find the well-known scarabs, or beetle stones, 

 not, it is true, generally in such hard stone, but quite as truly worked, 

 and claiming a date which might be called fabulous by many. 



* In printing this paper I feel bound to acknowledge how much obligation I 

 owe to the books of Mr. King, Mr. Story Maskelyne, and others. Mr. King's 

 works, especially, I have found most useful, though often differing from tho 

 conclusions drawn in them. — W.F.S. 



