Hi all
Looking for some help with these decanter i bought recently at a flea market - they were labelled as Whitefriars but I was pretty sure at the time they weren't and still pretty sure now!
I took a punt on them as they looked like the Mdina textured range but i have never seen them before and haven't found them in lots of online searching.
They certainly bare a remarkable resemblance to various textured Mdina bottles by Michael Harris, and i've seen in a previous thread about the different shapes and rims, some rarer than others:
http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,34693.0.htmlThey are both rectangular with polished pontils and identical moulded texture, but they differ at the shoulder where the glass is gathered and free blown - this area looks particularly like some Mdina examples.
What put me off the idea they were Mdina was firstly that they are made from clear glass with no colour at all! Is this unusual or unheard of to be mdina? I presume they would need to be clear to be a functional 'decanter' rather than an art glass piece but i'm not aware of mdina heading down the more 'homeware' route (albeit a very beautiful one)!? Which made me think they could Scandinavian especially with the very Holmegaard-like neck and metal & cork stoppers - but still no luck! The stoppers could of course been added later?
The other thing was the texture in pictures of coloured bottles I've seen appear deeper but this may just be the way the light works on the coloured glass giving more definition and each mould is different?
However, there is something that seems right about them being Mdina - quality, skilfully made, clarity, thick base, heavy (approx 1.2kg each), very similar texture, rim...
Could they be test pieces for a range that never went ahead... or am i just hoping and grasping at straws?!

Anyway, hoping you can help!
Thanks
Ed