Engraved gems, signets, talismans and ornamental intaglios, ancient and modern
A 1912 New York book by Duffield Osborne, published by Henry Holt, cataloguing engraved gems, signets and intaglios from antiquity to modern times for collectors and students of gem carving. Its plates show grids of photographed gems, each numbered and labelled by period, such as Etruscan scarabs, archaic Greek gems and early Roman gems with Etruscan influence. A designer might take from them the compact seal-shape formats, the tiny figure compositions cut into stone, and the dense black-field grid layouts.
