Cameo glass

The technique is first seen in ancient Roman art of about 30 BC, where it was an alternative to the more luxurious engraved gem vessels in cameo style that used naturally layered semi-precious gemstones such as onyx and agate.

[2] From the mid-19th century there was a revival of cameo glass, suited equally to Neo-Grec taste and the French Art Nouveau practiced by Émile Gallé.

All these dates are somewhat tentative,[9] and it is possible that smaller gem-like pieces of cameo glass continued to be produced between these periods.

By contrast, in the later period, there is a translucent colored overlay over a virtually colorless background, perhaps imitating rock crystal.

[13] Nineteenth-century English producers of true cameo glass include Thomas Webb and Sons and George Bacchus & Sons,[14] 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.

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.

[citation needed] 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.