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Cameo glass is a luxury form of
glass art Glass art refers to individual works of art that are substantially or wholly made of glass. It ranges in size from monumental works and installation pieces to wall hangings and windows, to works of art made in studios and factories, including gl ...
produced by cameo glass engraving or
etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other type ...
and carving through fused layers of differently colored glass to produce designs, usually with white opaque glass figures and motifs on a dark-colored background. The technique is first seen in
ancient Roman art The art of Ancient Rome, and the territories of its Roman Republic, Republic and later Roman Empire, Empire, includes Roman architecture, architecture, painting, Roman sculpture, sculpture and Roman mosaic, mosaic work. Luxury objects in metal-wo ...
of about 30 BC, where it was an alternative to the more luxurious
engraved gem An engraved gem, frequently referred to as an intaglio, is a small and usually semi-precious gemstone that has been carved, in the Western tradition normally with images or inscriptions only on one face. The engraving of gemstones was a major lux ...
vessels in cameo style that used naturally layered semi-precious
gemstones A gemstone (also called a fine gem, jewel, precious stone, semiprecious stone, or simply gem) is a piece of mineral crystal which, when cut or polished, is used to make jewelry or other adornments. Certain rocks (such as lapis lazuli, opal, a ...
such as
onyx Onyx is a typically black-and-white banded variety of agate, a silicate mineral. The bands can also be monochromatic with alternating light and dark bands. ''Sardonyx'' is a variety with red to brown bands alternated with black or white bands. ...
and
agate Agate ( ) is a banded variety of chalcedony. Agate stones are characterized by alternating bands of different colored chalcedony and sometimes include macroscopic quartz. They are common in nature and can be found globally in a large number of d ...
. Glass allowed consistent and predictable colored layers, even for round objects. From the mid-19th century there was a revival of cameo glass, suited equally to Neo-Grec taste and the French
Art Nouveau Art Nouveau ( ; ; ), Jugendstil and Sezessionstil in German, is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and ...
practiced by
Émile GallĂ© Émile GallĂ© (; 4 May 1846 in Nancy, France, Nancy – 23 September 1904 in Nancy) was a French artist and designer who worked in glass, and is considered to be one of the major innovators in the French Art Nouveau movement. He was noted fo ...
. Cameo glass is still produced today.


Roman glass

Roman cameo glass is fragile, and thus extremely rare—much more so than natural gemstone cameos such as the
Gemma Augustea The ''Gemma Augustea'' (Latin, ''Gem of Augustus'') is an ancient Roman low-relief cameo engraved gem cut from a double-layered Arabian onyx stone. It is commonly agreed that the gem cutter who created it was either Dioscurides or one of his disc ...
and Gonzaga Cameo, which are among the largest examples of many hundreds (at least) of surviving classical cameos produced from the 3rd century BC onward. Only about 200 fragments and 15 complete objects of early Roman cameo glass survive. The most famous example of these, and also among the best preserved, is the Portland Vase in the
British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...
. Other fine examples, such as the Morgan Cup (
Corning Museum of Glass The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning (city), New York, Corning, New York, United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Incorporated, Corning Glass Works and currently has a ...
), are drinking cups. Both of these named pieces show complex multi-figured mythological scenes, whose
iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...
has been much debated. The
Getty Villa The Getty Villa is an educational center and an art museum located at the easterly end of the Malibu coast in the Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. One of two campuses of th ...
has another cup, and a perfume bottle with scenes of Egyptian deities. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
in New York has a fragment over 11 inches (28 cm) long and 5 inches (13 cm) high from what was evidently an architectural
revetment A revetment in stream restoration, river engineering or coastal engineering is a facing of impact-resistant material (such as stone, concrete, sandbags, or wooden piles) applied to a bank or wall in order to absorb the energy of incoming water an ...
showing an acanthus
frieze In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...
with eagles, the luxurious equivalent in glass of a " Campana relief" in
pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...
. Judging from the very limited number of survivals, cameo glass was apparently produced in two periods: the early period about 30 BC to 60 AD, and then for about a century from the late-3rd century to the period of
Constantine the Great Constantine I (27 February 27222 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was a Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He played a Constantine the Great and Christianity, pivotal ro ...
and his sons. The latter period also saw a brief court revival of the art of gem-carving, which had been in decline. All these dates are somewhat tentative, and it is possible that smaller gem-like pieces of cameo glass continued to be produced between these periods. Glass from the later period is even rarer than from the earlier, with only a "handful" of complete pieces known, one of which was excavated in
Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...
. Its use was clearly restricted to the elite; the Portland Vase is said to have been excavated from the tomb of the Emperor
Septimius Severus Lucius Septimius Severus (; ; 11 April 145 – 4 February 211) was Roman emperor from 193 to 211. He was born in Leptis Magna (present-day Al-Khums, Libya) in the Roman province of Africa. As a young man he advanced through cursus honorum, the ...
, for whom it would have been a 200-year-old antique. The most popular color scheme for objects from the early period is white over blue, as in the vase from Pompeii (''illustration''), but other colors are found, such as the white over black, imitating onyx, of the Portland Vase. In the early period usually all layers are opaque. By contrast, in the later period, there is a
translucent In the field of optics, transparency (also called pellucidity or diaphaneity) is the physical property of allowing light to pass through the material without appreciable light scattering by particles, scattering of light. On a macroscopic scale ...
colored overlay over a virtually colorless background, perhaps imitating
rock crystal Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical fo ...
. The surface of the top layer elements is flat rather than carved as in the earlier group of pieces. File:Portland Vase BM Gem4036 n4.jpg, The other side of the Portland Vase File:Satyr Bacchus Petit Palais ADUT00240.jpg,
Satyr In Greek mythology, a satyr (, ), also known as a silenus or ''silenos'' ( ), and sileni (plural), is a male List of nature deities, nature spirit with ears and a tail resembling those of a horse, as well as a permanent, exaggerated erection. ...
giving grapes to the infant
Bacchus In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (; ) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. He was also known as Bacchus ( or ; ) by the Gre ...
, first century File:Museo Nazionale Napoli pannello 001.jpg, The initiation of
Ariadne In Greek mythology, Ariadne (; ; ) was a Cretan princess, the daughter of King Minos of Crete. There are variations of Ariadne's myth, but she is known for helping Theseus escape from the Minotaur and being abandoned by him on the island of N ...
into the
Dionysian mysteries The Dionysian Mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which sometimes used intoxicants and other trance-inducing techniques (like dance and music) to remove inhibitions. It also provided some liberation for people marginalized by Gre ...
, from
Pompeii Pompeii ( ; ) was a city in what is now the municipality of Pompei, near Naples, in the Campania region of Italy. Along with Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Villa Boscoreale, many surrounding villas, the city was buried under of volcanic ash and p ...
File:Museo Nazionale Napoli pannello 002.jpg, Companion panel File:Roman-era perfume bottle made of cameo glass showing homoerotic scene.jpg, Perfume bottle made of cameo glass showing homoerotic scene found in the Roman necropolis of Ostippo (Spain).


Later periods

The cameo technique was used in
Islamic art Islamic art is a part of Islamic culture and encompasses the visual arts produced since the 7th century CE by people who lived within territories inhabited or ruled by Muslims, Muslim populations. Referring to characteristic traditions across ...
in the 9th and 10th centuries (e.g. in the Corning Ewer), 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 A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcela ...
imitations made popular by
Wedgwood Wedgwood is an English China (material), fine china, porcelain and luxury accessories manufacturer that was founded on 1 May 1759 by the potter and entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood and was first incorporated in 1895 as Josiah Wedgwood and Sons L ...
'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
brooch A brooch (, ) is a decorative jewellery item designed to be attached to garments, often to fasten them together. It is usually made of metal, often silver or gold or some other material. Brooches are frequently decorated with enamel or with gem ...
es 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 Art Nouveau ( ; ; ), Jugendstil and Sezessionstil in German, is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and ...
period, by makers such as
Émile GallĂ© Émile GallĂ© (; 4 May 1846 in Nancy, France, Nancy – 23 September 1904 in Nancy) was a French artist and designer who worked in glass, and is considered to be one of the major innovators in the French Art Nouveau movement. He was noted fo ...
(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 Louis Comfort Tiffany (February 18, 1848 – January 17, 1933) was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is associated with the art nouveauLander, David"The Buyable ...
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.


Peking glass

Introduction of glass-working methods by Jesuits resulted in a Chinese form of Cameo glass, Peking glass. As with European Cameo glass, a textured image is created by carving away layers of glass from the core object.


Techniques

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 Blank or Blanks may refer to: *Blank (archaeology), a thick, shaped stone biface for refining into a stone tool *Blank (cartridge), a type of gun cartridge *Blank (Scrabble), a playing piece in the board game Scrabble *Blank (solution), a solutio ...
repeatedly dipped in
hydrofluoric acid Hydrofluoric acid is a solution of hydrogen fluoride (HF) in water. Solutions of HF are colorless, acidic and highly corrosive. A common concentration is 49% (48–52%) but there are also stronger solutions (e.g. 70%) and pure HF has a boiling p ...
, 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. One Roman piece uses a record six layers. It is not known where the Roman pieces were produced, but for want of any better suggestion most scholars think in the capital itself. It appears likely that at least the making of the blanks was initially in the hands of imported Syrian glass-workers.


Contemporary Innovations

In the 21st century, artists have developed new methods for producing cameo glass using digital tools and non-traditional mold-making processes. One contemporary approach involves designing detailed relief imagery using 3D modeling software and producing a positive form with a 3D printer. This form is then duplicated using an intermediary mold material to produce a final refractory mold, bypassing traditional wax-carving or acid etching methods. Unlike traditional cameo glass, which relies on engraving or acid etching to remove material, this method controls tonal contrast through variations in glass relief depth rather than surface carving. By layering glass and employing precise mold-making techniques, it achieves continuous tone imagery with subtle shading effects, differing from the stark contrast of traditional cameo work. This innovative approach was recognized in ''New Glass Review 39'' by the Corning Museum of Glass, highlighting its impact on modern kiln-glass practices.


See also

* Cased glass *
Flashed glass Flashed glass, or flash glass, is a type of glass created by coating a colorless gather of glass with one or more thin layers of colored glass. This is done by placing a piece of melted glass of one color into another piece of melted glass of a dif ...
*
Gold glass Gold glass or gold sandwich glass is a luxury form of glass where a decorative design in gold leaf is fused between two layers of glass. First found in Hellenistic Greece, it is especially characteristic of the Roman glass of the Late Roman Em ...


Notes


References

*
Hugh Honour Hugh Honour FRSL (26 September 1927 – 19 May 2016) was a British art historian, known for his writing partnership with John Fleming. Their ''A World History of Art'' (a.k.a. ''The Visual Arts: A History''), is now in its seventh edition and ...
and John Fleming, ''A World History of Art'', 1982 & revised eds, Macmillan, London *Lightfoot, Christopher
"Luxury Arts of Rome"
In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. (February 2009, retr. 23 September, 2009), *Trentinella, Rosemarie. "Roman Cameo Glass". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–9

(October 2003, retr. 16 September, 2009)
Texas A&M University Museum
Exhibition feature ''George Woodall and the Art of English Cameo Glass''. *Whitehouse, David. ''Roman glass in the Corning Museum of Glass'', Volume 1
Corning Museum of Glass The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning (city), New York, Corning, New York, United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Incorporated, Corning Glass Works and currently has a ...

Google books


External links


Corning Museum of Glass
Cameo glass feature.

Detail on makers of French cameo glass
Video of the process
from the
Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California, United States, housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. It is operated by the J. Paul Getty Trust, the world's wealthies ...

Jonathan Harris
UK Cameo Glass Artist {{Authority control Glass art Ancient Roman glassware Etching Art Nouveau works Glass types