(b Hanau; fl Paris, second half of the 19th century). French gem-engraver of German birth. He worked in cameo in the Renaissance Revival style. Many of his gems are copies of English and French royal portraits dating from the 16th century. The cutting is very sharp and refined, often more so than in the original, and his gems are characterized by the frequent use of a raised line cut from the pale layer of the stone to border the main subject in imitation of the 16th-century Italian engravers from whom he derived his models and style. Bissinger’s skill was demonstrated by a series of 112 gems, copied from examples in the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris, which he exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1878 in Paris. His work had already featured in the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867 and was noted in the London Art Journal (1868, p. 38). In 1873 he exhibited at the Weltausstellung in Vienna. After the 1876 Philadelphia Exhibition, Alexis Falize, the Parisian jeweller, remarked in his Jury Report on the extraordinary technique employed by Bissinger to create the effect of lace, using a lathe. Although his career was spent in Paris, several of the rare surviving signed examples of his work are set in jewelled mounts from English workshops, including a portrait cameo of Marie de’ Medici (London, V&A), in an enamelled pendant setting by Carlo Giuliano (1831–95). Another signed example, an onyx cameo of Elizabeth I (sold Geneva, Sotheby’s, 11–13 Nov 1981, lot 933), has a frame of emeralds and diamonds by Mrs Newman ( fl before 1866–c. 1910).

• Bissinger, Georges
  • Gem-engraving, §I, 12: Western, after 1800