Cameo glass is made by layering different colors of glass around each other, then wearing away the upper layers to revel the inner ones. Vessels with up to six layers of glass have been successfully made this way. The wearing away of the upper layers may be in part down using acid, but the final finishing is usually does by hand using hand tools or copper carving wheels. The process is time consuming, requires great skill, but results in beautiful three-dimensional decorations on the fluid shapes glass so readily takes.
La collection Daum (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy) © by dalbera
Daum of Nancy, France, was one of the most successful producers of cameo glass at the end of the Nineteenth Century. The natural motifs of Art Nouveau were especially suited to this form of glass. Daum still produces glass in this technique, as well as the crystal clear products the company is famous for.
Emile Galle (1846-1904) was another successful glass designer using the cameo glass technique.
La main aux algues et aux coquillages (Emile Gallé) © by dalbera
This work is rather unusual in it depicts the human hand. His works are found in museums and fine glass collections world-wide.
Cameo glass was first produced in the ancient world. The technique was lost and found several times, most recently in the mid-Nineteenth Century. John Northwood was able to reproduce the Portland Vase, from First Century Rome, and the flourishing of cameo glass is England followed. French glass designers followed suit, and there are many fine examples of turn-of-the-century cameo glass both in and out of museums.
Vase du Emile Gallé © by dalbera
More recently, while Daum still produces cameo glass, American glass makers have also taken up the challenge. Fenton makes a number of vases and lamps in cameo glass, and the Pilgrim Glass Company made some vases and bowls between the 1980′s and it closing in 2001. There is also some new cameo glass described as Bayel of France that seems to come from the Royal Champagne Crystal Work located in Bayel, Champagne, France. More about this production may be forthcoming.
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