After the discovery of the buried cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae c. 1748, a new type of souvenir jewelry emerged. These towns had been abruptly smothered under a deadly mudflow of volcanic dust, ash, gas, and steam by the unexpected eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. A subsequent eruption in 1631, complete with lava, added another layer to the mix. It took almost 1700 years from the first eruption of Mt. Vesuvius for the secret of the missing cities to be revealed.

Travelers on the Grand Tour of Europe found the newly excavated ruins of Pompeii to be an irresistible stop. Lava trinkets from these sites made for excellent and inexpensive souvenirs, easy to pack and carry. In addition, pinning a lava cameo on one’s blouse proved the wearer to be a well-traveled person of culture and good taste. The local industry was equal to the demand and created many cameos and intaglios out of this unlikely material to the unending delight of the tourists. These beautiful carvings were set into rings, earrings, bracelets, and necklaces.

While traditionally we call these muddy-colored Italian cameos lava, technically they are more likely tuff, welded tuff or volcanic breccia which is available throughout the world. A stickpin topped by a bust of Seneca in the Hull Grundy Collection at the British Museum donated as being composed of lava was discovered by museum scientists to be limestone. According to Charlotte Gere and Judy Rudoe in Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria:

The so-called ‘lava’ cameos provide an interesting case of marketing for tourists. Lava is a volcanic material with a rough pitted texture. How visitors were deceived into thinking that the smoothly polished cameos carved as finely as any in hardstone or shell were lava defies explanation, for they are carved not in lava but in a soft fine limestone native to southern Italy. One can only assume that the palette of muted browns, greys and greens resembled pumice, enabling the myth to spread that it was Vesuvian lava. ¹

Even though it may not be geologically correct terminology, we continue to use the term lava jewelry, coined by the original Italian carvers, when referring to this material with the biscuit porcelain luster. The ‘lava’ rock carvings from the Mt. Vesuvius region range in color from off-white or yellowish to varying shades of gray, when it’s not been dyed any number of deeper colors. Cameos of this type are easily identified both for the material they are carved from and the time period they were made. Subject matter included archaeological motifs, bacchantes, satyrs, portraits, and mythological gods and creatures.