Ancient artists carved cameos from shell or hard stone, exploiting natural color gradations to create low-relief designs. Often cameos are small, oval, and rather flat. In comparison, this brooch is unusually large and dimensional. The artist carved it from a Helmut shell, sometimes called the cameo shell. This enormous sea snail produces a thick shell that has large peaks that offer great depth for Shinji Nakaba to exploit for his sculptures. Here Nakaba was intentionally ambiguous in creating the irregular border and carved face. Looking at Greek art and thinking about historical antecedents, the artist created a ghostly figure that seems to be pushing through the white and brown shell. Nakaba hopes that the wearer, and viewer, will question the figure’s gender and emotion. Are they dead or alive? Are they sleeping? Crying?

---