Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. > Malta Glass
Mdina Lollipop vases
Patrick:
--- Quote from: glassobsessed on January 21, 2017, 07:03:34 PM ---When was Jim Munnelly working there?
--- End quote ---
Started August 1971 and finished in August 1975 ...........
Patrick.
glassobsessed:
Where did it come from? Not sure Wolfie, perhaps via Sue speaking to the Harris family or maybe from Ron W.
I try to apply a healthy dose of scepticism to stories like this, myths are so easily created and they tend to have a half-life lasting decades. Can make for a nice bit of marketing too... Whether what we are calling cobalt here is the aforementioned dark blue or not, not a clue. What does give the story traction is the apparent scarcity of items made with this particular blue, I have three and they are all distinctly early variations that could easily date to 1969 (when production started in earnest). Photos of them tomorrow, need daylight for good results, my photographic lights have the blues...
Jim M arrived at Mdina more than 2½ years after production first started, plenty of time to use up a one off pot of glass, if of course that is what it actually was.
So what colour are we calling the blue in this photo?
Items in this murky blue tend to be really thick and heavy with various layers containing green and purpley bits, looks like a light blue on the outside.
All those Ming pieces are colour underneath a light blue as well.
chopin-liszt:
If Jim Munnelly didn't start until '71, then it is highly unlikely that the cobalt blue is the same as the "dark" blue pot/s he knows of.
The "cobalt pot of stuff" pieces, if and when found, are often by Michael Harris.
I'm sure the information that there was only ever one pot of cobalt came from Elizabeth Harris to me at the very first Cambridge fair I was at, when the Mdina exhibition was on and the fair was still held in the town hall.
I have since talked to Ron Wheeler about it and he confirmend that there was only ever one pot of cobalt, early on while Harris was still there.
Ron was not involved with Mdina that early on, he would have got his information from the Harris family.
The story has never changed. I do not believe it is any form of "alternative fact". ;D
WhatHo!:
Here is the quote from Jim, he remembers his time very clearly at Mdina so I think its very unlikely he would get this wrong. " in my time there we had small Furness for dark blue and purple, larger Furness for light blue, and of course even bigger one for clear." We can take from this that they had a pot of Dark Blue during the 71-75 period. Dark blue or cobalt? not sure what the difference is?
chopin-liszt:
There was a darker brighter teal blue used later on, the one Mark Hill describes as jewell-like. I suspect that will be the dark blue Jim talks of.
Cobalt blue is the same colour as the blue used at Isle of Wight in Aurene and Seaward.
Here is an early ink-pot, in a pale teal. It has Mdina written on the base in Harris' writing and the shape is rounded, not straight sided.
Followed by an Onion vase, in the deeper jewell-like blue and a pulled ear in the same shade.
Then a Mdina cobalt tricorn charger.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version