CAMEO GLASS & CRYSTAL
Cameo glass is an art form of luxury glass produced by cameo etching and sculpture through fused layers of glass of different colors to produce designs, usually with figures and patterns in opaque white glass on a background of dark.
From the middle of the 19th century, we came to a renaissance of cameo glass, adapted as well to neo-Greek taste as to French new art practiced by Émile Gallé. Cameo glass is still produced today.
The cameo technique was used in Islamic art in the 9th and 10th centuries, but then lost until the 18th century in Europe, and not perfected until the 19th century. Nineteenth-century English producers of true cameo glass include Thomas Webb and Sons and George Bacchus & Sons, although ceramic imitations made popular by Wedgwood's bi-colored "jasper ware", imitated by others from the late 18th century onward, are far more common. Like Wedgwood's designers, they usually worked in a more or less neoclassical style. The French medalist Alphonse Eugène Lecheverel, whose work for Richardson's was exhibited in Paris in 1878. Outstanding English cameo glass artisans were Philip Pargeter (1826–1906) and John Northwood (1836–1902), who first successfully reproduced the Portland Vase in cameo glass and George Woodall. Cameo glass, roughed out by the etching process provided a popular substitute for genuine cameos in brooches and plaques and similar uses, and there are still many producers today.
Artistically the most notable work since the revival was in the Art Nouveau period, by makers such as Émile Gallé (1846–1904) and Daum of Nancy, when Roman-inspired subjects and color schemes were totally abandoned, and plant and flower designs predominate. Louis Comfort Tiffany made only a small number of cameo pieces, which were a French specialty in this period, though other firms such as the Czech Moser Glass were also producers.
In the modern revival all of the top layer except the areas needed for the design are usually removed by an etching process—the figure areas are covered with a resist layer of wax or some other acid-resistant material such as bituminous paint, and the blank repeatedly dipped in hydrofluoric acid, so that cameo glass is in some sense a sub-set of acid-etched glass. The detailed work is then done with wheels and drills, before finishing, and usually polishing. It seems that in the ancient world the entire process of removing the unwanted white or other top layer was done by drills and wheels—wheel-cut decoration on glass of a single color was very common in ancient Rome. In the case of "three-layer" (or three-color) cameo, there is another layer of glass on top of the white opaque one, and further layers are possible.
From the middle of the 19th century, we came to a renaissance of cameo glass, adapted as well to neo-Greek taste as to French new art practiced by Émile Gallé. Cameo glass is still produced today.
The cameo technique was used in Islamic art in the 9th and 10th centuries, but then lost until the 18th century in Europe, and not perfected until the 19th century. Nineteenth-century English producers of true cameo glass include Thomas Webb and Sons and George Bacchus & Sons, although ceramic imitations made popular by Wedgwood's bi-colored "jasper ware", imitated by others from the late 18th century onward, are far more common. Like Wedgwood's designers, they usually worked in a more or less neoclassical style. The French medalist Alphonse Eugène Lecheverel, whose work for Richardson's was exhibited in Paris in 1878. Outstanding English cameo glass artisans were Philip Pargeter (1826–1906) and John Northwood (1836–1902), who first successfully reproduced the Portland Vase in cameo glass and George Woodall. Cameo glass, roughed out by the etching process provided a popular substitute for genuine cameos in brooches and plaques and similar uses, and there are still many producers today.
Artistically the most notable work since the revival was in the Art Nouveau period, by makers such as Émile Gallé (1846–1904) and Daum of Nancy, when Roman-inspired subjects and color schemes were totally abandoned, and plant and flower designs predominate. Louis Comfort Tiffany made only a small number of cameo pieces, which were a French specialty in this period, though other firms such as the Czech Moser Glass were also producers.
In the modern revival all of the top layer except the areas needed for the design are usually removed by an etching process—the figure areas are covered with a resist layer of wax or some other acid-resistant material such as bituminous paint, and the blank repeatedly dipped in hydrofluoric acid, so that cameo glass is in some sense a sub-set of acid-etched glass. The detailed work is then done with wheels and drills, before finishing, and usually polishing. It seems that in the ancient world the entire process of removing the unwanted white or other top layer was done by drills and wheels—wheel-cut decoration on glass of a single color was very common in ancient Rome. In the case of "three-layer" (or three-color) cameo, there is another layer of glass on top of the white opaque one, and further layers are possible.
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