An unusual cameo with dark matrix engraved with a four-line Greek inscription:
"ΠΑΛΛΑΔΙ ΕΥΤΥΧΙ ΜΕΤΑ ΕΙΕΡΟΚΛΙΗC"
(Good fortune to Palladius and Hierokleia)
Inscribed cameos wishing good fortune and prosperity are thought to have been given as gifts, often mounted in rings or pendants. Very few of the comparable cameos surviving from the Roman period (cf. Hening) are inscribed in Latin, with the tradition apparently more popular in the Greek speaking world. This example, which was remounted in silver in the 19th century, is the only one known to date to refer to a married couple.
The Ionides collection
Constantine Ioannes ‘Ipliktzis’ Ionides (1775-1852) was one of the first merchants of Greek origin to arrive in England. Around 1815, his son, Alexander Constantine Ionides (1810-1890), set up a London branch for his trading firm and moved in 1834 with his family to London where he 
became a leading art collector and patron intimately connected with thriving cultural circles in Victorian London. The collection, known today as the Ionides Collection of gems, was formed by his son Constantine Alexander Ionides (1833-1900), a well known as benefactor of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who assembled a collection of extremely high quality items as his cabinet of gems attests. His son Alexander Constantine (1862-1931) improved upon the collection with further purchases until his death in 1931. Later, the collection was owned by the great-grand-daughter of Constantine Alexander Ionides, Pamela Gordon, Lady Adam Gordon (1903-2004), and her husband. Many gems in the cabinet of Constantine Alexander were acquired from famous collections, such as the Marlborough, the Story-Maskelyne, the Charles Robinson, the Demidoff, the Beugnot, the Evans, and the less well-known Rosarena, with some from the collections of Dr Nott and B. Hertz. As such, many have been published in the respective catalogues of those collections.
Alexander Constantines' purchases were less numerous but no less distinguished than his father’s. He acquired several gems from the collection of Charles Newton-Robinson and some from the collection of Arthur Evans, known for his excavations at the palace of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete. One of the Ionides gems belonged formerly to Fenerli, physician to the Sultan in Istanbul - it had presumably been given to the younger lonides, whose mother was a Fenerli, and whose maternal uncle was the physician to Abdul Hamid. The family continued their intellectual, cultural, and collecting activities through the 20th century.
