# Cameo Glass (カメオ・グラス)

> Cased glass built from two or more layers in contrasting colours, where the outer layer is carved, cut or engraved away so the design stands out from the ground. Getty classifies it as a material rather than a period style. The image is not painted but left behind, and the thickness left standing is what decides how opaque it reads.

- IndexStyle No.521 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/cameo-glass
- Kind: Technique · Family: Vessel and Craft Techniques · Era: Roman era–
- Mood: Technique, Luxury, Calm
- What this family collects: Techniques that inlay, lay on, or pour another material into the body of a vessel, where the process of finishing became a look of its own in each region.

## Defining characteristics

- A pale image standing up in relief over a darker ground
- Where the cut runs deep the ground colour shows through and the image sinks; only the thickest passages go fully opaque
- The ground is one even colour and all the tonal range sits in the image
- Edges are steps rather than drawn lines, so raking light throws a shadow off the image itself

## Best used for

- Building an image out of two stacked surfaces, where the edge is carried by a step and its shadow instead of a drawn line
- Working in blind emboss or foil, where nothing is added in colour and the whole image has to come from difference in thickness

## Composition recipe

- Typography & lettering: Cut the lettering out of the same layer as the image. Let the stroke width be a carving width, and avoid hairline faces.
- Layout & structure: A wide field of one dark colour with a single pale image on it. Keep the ground plain and put nothing between the two.
- Material & texture: Layers of contrasting glass with the outer one cut away. The thickness you leave standing gives the range from translucent to fully opaque.

## Colour

Read off the reference works below, so a direction rather than a fixed palette.

- Ground: #EDE7DA
- The colour it is remembered by: #7C89A8
- Text and outlines: #1C2B5A

## What to avoid

Copying only the light and dark contrast as two flat fills loses the translucent middle that depth of cut produces, and the result reads as cut paper.

## Application checklist

Work through this before calling a piece an application of this style.

- [ ] Visible in the piece: A pale image standing up in relief over a darker ground
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Where the cut runs deep the ground colour shows through and the image sinks; only the thickest passages go fully opaque
- [ ] Visible in the piece: The ground is one even colour and all the tonal range sits in the image
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Edges are steps rather than drawn lines, so raking light throws a shadow off the image itself
- [ ] The layout follows: A wide field of one dark colour with a single pale image on it. Keep the ground plain and put nothing between the two.
- [ ] The lettering follows: Cut the lettering out of the same layer as the image. Let the stroke width be a carving width, and avoid hairline faces.
- [ ] The material and surface follow: Layers of contrasting glass with the outer one cut away. The thickness you leave standing gives the range from translucent to fully opaque.
- [ ] The colour relation holds: #EDE7DA as ground, #7C89A8 carrying the style, #1C2B5A for text and outlines
- [ ] At least one reference work below has been studied directly
- [ ] The caution above ("What to avoid") has been addressed

## Related styles

- **Stained Glass (ステンドグラス)** — Divides light with colored glass and lead lines, making contour itself structure and story. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/stained-glass
- **Art Nouveau (アール・ヌーヴォー)** — Joins letters, figures and ornament into one flowing, plant-like line. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/art-nouveau

## Compose it with something else

The dictionary can put this entry in a structural role and another in an accent role, and report where the two fight: https://indexstyle.org/compose?ids=cameo-glass+stained-glass

## Further study

- looking at a cross section of cased glass and counting how many layers of outer casing and ground are stacked
- comparing thinly cut areas and thickly left areas within one image, and observing where the transmitted colour switches
- following what techniques the Getty lists under cased glass, and confirming how cameo glass differs

## Reference works

- Cup with Bacchus and Ariadne, Rome, c. 25 BC–AD 25, Getty Villa — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arte%20romana%2C%20coppa%20da%20vino%20con%20scene%20di%20bacco%20e%20ariadne%2C%2025ac-25%20dc%20ca..JPG
- Thomas Webb & Sons, cameo glass vase — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cameo%20vase%20by%20Thomas%20Webb.jpg
- D'Argental, cameo glass vase — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cameo%20Glass%20Vase%20D%E2%80%99argental.jpg

## Source of record

- Getty Research Institute — Art & Architecture Thesaurus: cameo glass (300181908) — https://vocab.getty.edu/page/aat/300181908

## Machine surfaces

- JSON: https://indexstyle.org/api/styles/cameo-glass
- Image-generation prompt (legally clean): https://indexstyle.org/styles/cameo-glass/prompt.txt
- MCP: https://indexstyle.org/mcp (tools: search_styles, get_style, compare_styles, compose_styles, find_related_styles; prompts: image-prompt, apply-style)