Dr. Julia Kagan, Curator of post-Classical engraved gems in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, has devoted a lifetime of scholarship to the study of gem-engraving in Britain, in part inspired by the English Brown brothers who carved gems for Catherine the Great during the 18th century. The many articles she published in the 1960s and 1970s covering various aspects of the history of glyptics in Great Britain and the formation of the Hermitages collection of British gems, an earlier dissertation which originally formed the basis of this book, and the attached catalogue, comprise a suitable tribute to the immense richness and diversity of gem engraving in Britain from Antiquity to the present. This comprehensive study includes a catalogue of the British engraved gems in The State Hermitage Museum, appendices of archive documents, and a table of British engravers.

This book studies small but highly captivating artworks from antiquity – engraved gemstones. These objects had multiple applications, and the images upon them captured snapshots of people's beliefs, ideologies, and everyday occupations. They provide a unique perspective on the propaganda of Roman political leaders, especially Octavian/Augustus.

This book discuss different types of engraved gems in the collection of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden Leiden, their makers, users and re-users, combining archaeological, culture historical and geological perspectives.

Medieval Europe offers a pageant of almost incredible richness: King Arthur and his round table, demons and cathedrals, Charlemagne and his paladins. The Carolingian culture of the late eighth to late tenth centuries (in what is now France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and northern Italy) offers more than its fair share of achievements. This heavily illustrated study examines one revealing legacy of Charlemagne's heirs and his people--the Carolingian gems of rock crystal, jet, and agate engraved with complex figural scenes, which have never before been studied as a group. These objects have been largely ignored in the scholarship of medieval art, partly because of the difficulty of access. Genevra Kornbluth assembles for the first time all twenty surviving gems, from small seal matrices to the forty-one-figure "Susanna crystal" in London, along with information about lost works. The unique features of each gem are made visible in over 200 detailed black-and-white photographs, often highly magnified and produced using new techniques developed to record transparent engraving. Kornbluth fully analyzes the techniques of manufacture, style, chronology, iconography, and patronage of each gem and examines their social functions, the organization and status of the artisans who created them, and relations between media. The gems are presented as evidence of the rich diversity of the Carolingian culture, rather than as reflections of an artistic program dictated by the imperial courts; they are also seen to be essentially new creations, drawing on earlier visual traditions but adapting their sources to address contemporary concerns.

A comprehensive study of the depictions of animals and their significance on Greek and Roman gems. The work examines the associations between animal depictions and the type of gemstone and its believed qualities. The study also compares the representation of animals on gems to other, larger media, and analyses the differences.