Playing Cupid

The Victorians viewed the world through a veil of romance and sentiment. Flowers, hands, anchors, knots and hearts were symbols of emotion and attachment. Cupid, or Eros, was the consummate love token. The god of erotic love and beauty, he is often depicted with wings, a bow and a quiver of arrows with which to "inspire" romantic love. Cupid’s arrow, once struck the heart, makes the victim fall in love.

Around the mid-eighteenth century, discoveries of archaeological sites in Italy and Egypt sparked an obsession for neo-classicism that widely influenced the architecture, art and design of the period, including Josiah Wedgwood's jasperware, with its distinctive raised white bas-relief depictions of Greek and Roman mythology. Cupid was a popular Wedgwood motif throughout the mid-twentieth century, when many of the pieces I collect were manufactured.

Cynthia Rybakoff’s single edition re-mixed Wedgwood Cupid cameo jewelry: vintage 14k gold filled black basalt heart pendant on 17 1/2" vintage chains, $315; 12k gold filled vintage classic blue screw back earrings, $105; 12k gold filled vintage sage green pendant with modern 24k vermeil 23" pearl chain, $275. By request at CynthiaRybakoff.com.

It's Me Cathy

I am still swooning from part one of Masterpiece Classic's new adaptation of Emily Brontë's brutal and passionate story of uncivilized emotion run amuck on the solitary windswept moors, Wuthering Heights. Fortunately I can watch it again and again at pbs.org.

I awoke this morning with the operatic voice of Kate Bush in my head, and had to watch her 1978 “Wuthering Heights” video on YouTube, an odd geisha style ballet pantomime of the story, which satisfied my craving for more of the turbulent and ultimately thwarted love affair of high-spirited Cathy Earnshaw and her dark brooding Heathcliff.

I imagine myself a modern day Cathy coming home at last, dressed for blustery weather and grey skies on the Yorkshire moors in a flowing empire waist ecru linen dress with a cropped fitted wool jacket in periwinkle blue, my long raven hair untamed by pins or clips, my neck adorned with a neoclassic cameo pendant in sage green and white jasper ware on a modern biker curb chain dipped in shiny 24k gold.

Cynthia Rybakoff vintage green cameo pendant in modern 24k vermeil setting, edition 1/1, $575, by request at CynthiaRybakoff.com.

Ring In The New Year

My maternal grandmother had humble roots on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She met a young handsome blond sailor from Romania, who had come to America for a better life and to fight for our side in WWI. After the war, he gave my grandmother a lovely black onyx cameo engagement ring, with a plain bezel and hand engraved ornament on the band. It’s hallmarked “14K” , indicating American, not European origin, and inscribed “S.H.F 2/2 1917”.

I was given the ring after my grandmother’s death, and to this day wear it as a right hand ring endowed with a little piece of my own fashion history. Recently, I started collecting vintage cameos in a variety of materials, especially colorful English Jasperware and Italian coral and shell. Collecting isn’t really the right word. I am obsessed with cameo jewelry.

Cameos add a graphic punch of color and design, plus a bit of much needed romance, to my modern classic wardrobe which leans piously towards subdued tonal palettes. But if I’m feeling particularly adventurous, I’ll throw on an eclectic mix of Liberty prints, stripes, tweeds or plaids and finish it off with a cameo piece or three. See a curated selection of vintage cameo jewelry at my portfolio site CynthiaRybakoff.com.

Cynthia Rybakoff vintage French blue cameo ring, size 6 1/2, with modern 24k vermeil finish, edition 1/1 $255, by request at CynthiaRybakoff.com.