english cameo glass in the corning museum of glass

According to tradition, Hodgetts,
Richardson & Son made 40 blanks for
the Portland Vase project. Thirty-eight
of these are said to have been defective,
the 39th was usable, and the 40th survives
in its unworked state.
Richardson's stand at the Paris exposition
was breathtaking. It included not
only Locke's Portland Vase and cameo
glasses carved by Alphonse Lechevrel
(see page 28), but also a great variety of
cut, engraved, acid-etched, and threaded
glass. (Joshua Hodgetts, another of
Richardson's employees, had recently
developed and patented the threading
machine, which was used to apply long,
spirally wound trails.)
Locke left Richardson's in 1879 and
worked successively for Philip Pargeter's
Red House Glass Works and another
local firm, Webb 8c Corbett. In 1882,
however, he emigrated to the United
States, where he became an influential
figure at the New England Glass Company
of East Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The proprietor of that company was
Edward Drummond Libbey, who subsequently
relocated it to Toledo, Ohio, in
order to take advantage of the availability
of natural gas there. Locke went with
him, but in 1891 he moved to Pittsburgh,
where he became head of design
at the United States Glass Company
and opened his own finishing shop. In
America, Locke made cameo glasses and
developed a number of highly successful
varieties of Art Glass, including Amberina
(patented in 1883), Pomona (1885),
Wild Rose or Peachblow (1886), Agata
(about 1887), and maize glassware
(1889).
FIG. 21 (left). Joseph Locke's replica of
the Portland Vase.
FIG. 22. The Birth of Venus, by Alphonse Lechevrel.