Topic: Help please on a new puchase......... Lollipop vase.

[chriscooper]

Looks good Patrick.
John, I don't say this very often about a piece of glass but that purple fish vase is the dogs.... love it.

[glassobsessed]

'tis lovely...

The group photo shows some of the variations in these early fish.

The fish vase is not signed Patrick, none of these early fish vases made in 68 or perhaps 69 seem to be, they tend to be quite small in size (5" or 6" tall). Most are not clear cased - which might be a slightly later variation. They are Michael Harris' early development of the design, the first couple were made at the RCA before he left for Malta. So they pre date MDG by a few years or so, not seen many fish vases from MDG at all, Sue has the one in the photo. I think that is Vincente Boffos style, this particular shape variation can be found in Mdina Fish vases in the mid 1970s too.

The last photo is the base of the blue vase, it was a real surprise when I first saw it.

[chopin-liszt]

I have just inspected the base of that Boffo-style Fish. It has the semi-gouged and polished and shiney but marginally matt base, so it could be MDG rather than Mdina.
My lollipop has a properly flat, completely polished base, so there is no way of telling where it was made.

[WhatHo!]

My feeling is that if it is highly polished then its Mdina. Do we have any MDG labelled pieces that are highly polished?

[chopin-liszt]

I was referring to the picture of the Fish solifleur John posted. The Boffo-style Earthtones one.
John has images of loads of my glass, and he can often find them faster than I can. He's better at organising computery insides than I am.

Or are you now talking about animal models?
We should perhaps always use a capital F at the beginning of the word to denote it being a Fish solifleur, as opposed to a model of some creature, for which a small f should be kept, if it's a fishy thing.

[glassobsessed]

Plenty of MDG to be found with polished bases.

Attempting to categorize via a single feature like a base polished or not rarely works, there always seem to be so many exceptions.

[chopin-liszt]

I've just had a good look around. Some which I did think were fully polished are still a little gouged, but I've got a pwt with an MDG label with a proper flat polished base, sitting right beside me now.

The Earthtones "Cube" solifleur I have does have gouges. I would suspect gouges are more common on MDG than on Mdina. I haven't seen any goudgey-bottomed Mdina. Yet.

[WhatHo!]

I spotted this lollipop at a fair, I'm sure it was MDG? It had red inside with frothy yellow verticals over the top and a buff Battuto base. It was angled a bit at the front and slightly curving in at the back. Too expensive to buy as he thought it was a rare Mdina piece, he was a bit hard-nosed so I didn't put him right

[WhatHo!]

Hi, does any one have an opinion on this piece pls?

[chopin-liszt]

Not one that differs or adds anything to yours.