Glass Ornament with
Presidential Cameo Acquired

As president of the United States, George Washington enthusiastically supported American manufacturing and envisioned a day when native goods could compete with those made in Great Britain. During his presidency, however, the British maintained a distinct advantage in a number of heavily refined goods, such as glassware, ceramics, and textiles. Washington often purchased goods and received gifts from intrepid entrepreneurs attempting to establish a foothold in the marketplace, but it would be another generation and years after Washington’s death before Americans would succeed in that endeavor.

The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, firm of Bakewell, Page, and Bakewell was the first to manufacture luxury glassware at a competitive price for the American market. During the Marquis de Lafayette’s tour of the United States from 1824 to 1825, the Pittsburgh firm produced its most technically accomplished works to date: colorless lead glass mantel ornaments featuring an image of Lafayette’s adoptive father.

The mantel ornament, in the shape of an urn, contains a cameo likeness of George Washington executed in a pure white fired china clay. Inclusion of such a cameo in molten glass required great technical skill on the part of the glassblower to prevent bubbles from forming around the figure. The Bakewell firm further showed off its prowess with nearly flawless glass and the skillful cutting of multiple facets to reflect light. In an era before electric lighting, such ornaments would have taken pride of place on a mantelpiece lit by candles and whale-oil lamps. One American newspaper celebrated these cameo-incrusted wares, or sulphides, as “novel, curious, and elegant specimen[s] of American industry and talent.

”This example, one of only three known, descended in the Murdoch family of western Pennsylvania until its purchase by Mount Vernon this year.

Purchased with funds provided by the Frank L. and Sarah Miller Coulson Foundation