By 1925, when George Woodall died at the age of 75 in Kingswinford, the village
near Stourbridge, England where he had been born, the beauty of English Cameo
Glass had all but been forgotten. Although Woodall had completed The Origin
of Painting (c. 1920) just three or four years earlier, the tastes
of art collectors had long abandoned the elaborate, decorative quality of cameo
carved glass.
As a testament to the devalued state of English cameo glass in
the early years of the century, John Northwood I’s Pegasus Vase (1882),
now in the Smithsonian Institution, Gellatly Collection, which had been purchased
at auction in 1886 out of the original owner’s estate for the sum of
$5,900 emerged again in 1928 having been acquired for only $1,800 by John Gellatly.
The revival of cameo glass production in England during the 1880’s and
1890’s had coincided at first with the end of the neo-classical revival
and soon transformed into the ultimate expression of Victorian tastes with
its penchant for elaborate ornament and exotic eclecticism. Changes in taste
among the monied art collecting classes brought the production of cameo glass
to an end.
Only toward the middle of the century did a few astute collectors
realize the merit of the works of George Woodall and his brother Thomas, John
Northwood I and several of the other less well known carvers of cameo glass.
General renewed interest in academic art of the nineteenth century has also
helped broaden the public awareness of the short lived movement in art. It
is the goal of the exhibition and text to broaden the knowledge and interest
in the art of English cameo glass and in particular to focus on the mastery
of craftsmanship in the work of George Woodall.
