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Callais, Turquois

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CALLAIS AND CALLAINA.
63
down to us, are all executed in the green sort ; the prin­cipal being the bust of Tiberius (Florence), the head as large as a walnut, sculptured in full relief; and the busts of Livia and the same emperor as a child, in half relief, on a stone of much larger dimensions (Marlborough)—the latter a carving of extraordinary merit. The last-named cabinet also boasts a cameo of still greater rarity— a small portrait of a Greek prince, in a Turquois beautifully azure, and evi­dently " de la vieille roche " in every sense of the term. Antique intagli in this stone, owing probably to its want of hardness, do not exist at all, except a few examples in the Sassanian class. But the Renaissance artists employed it largely for small heads, " en ronde bosse," and yet more for camei ; such being the true origin of almost all these small works in Turquois, though usually regarded as antique. The modern Persians practise the converse art to that of their ancestors, the ëéèïêüëëçóéò : instead of inlaying gold with Turquois, thoy inlay Turquois with gold : engraving cyphers and arabesques upon its surface, they fill them with fine gold, beaten in after the manner of damascening steel. Considering the fragility of the substance, how this is effected remains a mystery to European lapidaries.
This stone has pretty much the same chemical constituents as the Lapis-lazuli, but seems to possess a somewhat softer paste; and, for the most part, becomes decomposed and chalky by long lying in the earth, as is often to be remarked in tho Turquois set in jewelry so discovered though but two or three centuries old.
Ben Mansur states that the best Turquois came then (as now) from Nishapur in Khorasan, the rest from Ghasnah, Irak, and Kerman. Of the first sort he makes seven va­rieties, according to their relative degrees of hardness, and their tints ; that named after Abu-Ishak being the finest, and the Andelibi, of a milky blue, the weakest. His
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