During the late-Victorian and Art Nouveau periods, skilled artisans revived a 2,000-year-old technique from the Orient and Near East to produce what we now commonly call cameo glass. Basically, it is a method of multiple-layering glass, with the top layer or layers cut or etched away to create a multicolor design in relief.
European designers rose to prominence during the cameo-glass era, and the demand has never waned for premium, hand-etched examples by Gallé, Thomas Webb and the unlikeliest of all, Daum Nancy.

The Daum family – whose members were lawyers by trade – made its name in art glass almost by accident. In 1878 the elder Daum, Jean, assumed ownership of a glassworks near the town of Nancy, France, as partial settlement of a debt. Jean, and later his sons, Auguste and Antonin, developed an unexpected interest in the glassworks and went on to design and craft some of the finest pictorial cameo glass of the late 19th- and early 20th centuries.

A Daum Nancy lamp is always a spotlight-grabber at auction. SCM spotted this beauty that’s coming up in Tom Harris Auctions’ Dec. 15 sale. It’s a signed 12 7/8-inch boudoir lamp with a summery scene of dark-green trees against a mottled red and yellow background – one of more than 30 gorgeous lamps to be auctioned. In addition to cameo-glass lamps, there are examples of leaded-glass, reverse-painted, Pairpoint, Victorian hanging and Chicago Mosaic lamps, plus a dazzling array of other antique glass and Victorian furniture. View details of the sale online at www.tomharrisauctions.com.