Glass Message Board
Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass Paperweights => Topic started by: keith on October 03, 2009, 04:20:13 PM
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6.5 inches high,must be Mdina,do they make many hollow weights?Keith.
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There are some, but I don't know about that one
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A photo without the camera flash in daylight may help, or it may just confuse the issue. ;D
John
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The colour is as you can see the flash didn't change it,Keith.
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Still Mdina but how common,or not,are these hollow weights,any info' please,Keith.
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Saw your original post about this Keith but afraid I am clueless about it, have never seen one before. A photo in daylight might help, are there any marks on it from production?
John
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The colour is the same in daylight,no marks just Mdina colours,Keith.
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A quick explanation of the moderations here: Keith, the last three posts have been split off from the thread discussing another Mdina object and merged with your original thread. The merged thread was then moved to Glass Paperweights, where it might be seen by fresh eyes.
Hope someone can help.
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Thanks Cathy,most grateful,Keith.
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I don't know about this weight at all. It does look as if there are silver chloride salts used to create some of the surface colours, but that doesn't mean it's Mdina.
If it is, I would think it's quite a late/recentish piece, not an area I'm familiar with.
The very conical shape is not one I recognise, it's surface decorated - I'm more familiar with when colours were melted in the pot, the base does not look like any I've seen.
Sorry not to be of any use at all.
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Mdina certainly have made hollow weights - I have a hollow magnum - but I have not seen a Mdina weight in colours such as yours. Could well be more recent production, though.
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A magnum? Sorry, I'm curious, what's that?
I have a big hollow Mdina weight. It's post Harris, but fairly early. Splodgy yellow background, with what I describe as "intestiney" trails over it. The trails are clear glass covered in splodgy orange. It's a bit more complex than the ordinary splodgy stuff, which, I believe, comes later.
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A magnum? Sorry, I'm curious, what's that?
I'm obviously reading far too many books on paperweights!! I'm sure several of my reference sources uses "magnum" as a smart way of saying "larger than normal". The problem is that there are no standards that are generally accepted - so like Humpty Dumpty, when I use a word it means what I want it to mean, no more, no less. Or to be technical, a magnum paperweight is one that is larger than really necessary to hold down papers on my desk!
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Ah-ha.
My hollow Mdina lurid yellow and orange PW is bigger than normal PWs, I suppose - I'm not really a PW person.
I tend to call the very big ones doorstops, but I wouldn't use the hollow weight as a doorstop - not heavy enough, being hollow!
I thought a magnum was a tv cop, a bottle of bubbly, or an "ice-cream" lollipop.
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I tend to call the very big ones doorstops, but I wouldn't use the hollow weight as a doorstop - not heavy enough, being hollow!
Some of them aren't really heavy enough to hold down papers in a stiff breeze!!!
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Both of these,the tallest marked Mdina,have a similar colour scheme, in particular a yellowish green diagonal streak which is just visible on the picture so I'd presume they are all around the same date,Keith.
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I'm afraid I'd have to disagree, Keith. The two marked Mdina, the tall bark effect vase and the smaller bottle, have colour that comes from being melted in the pot, while your PW is surface decorated with enamels which as added to the gather of clear glass, although the streaks you refer to are similar on all three pieces, these come from silver salts, which colour glass, and sometimes, the salts turn to gas in the heat and give iridesence when the glass escapes from the moil during production. I'd say your PW is considerably later than the other pieces, if it is Mdina at all. The base looks completely wrong to me, I'm afraid.
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Ok the dates are different but the decor' on the weight is not on the the surface but in the glass like the other pieces,all of which are smooth to touch,also when held up to the light the weights overall colour is very close to the streaks in this small vase which is signed and labelled Mdina;I must say the base is nothing like the other 30 odd pieces we have,Keith.
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For info on "Magnum" ...
In relation to a regular, domed paperweight it usually means having a diameter of over 3.5 inch (9cm). Some folk do use the term for anything over 3 inch (7.5cm). Super magnum would be 4.5 inch (11.5cm) or greater. But makers such as Caithness had their own sizes for such as "magnum" - which I don't remember right now.
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I've been collecting earlier Mdina and Harris dynasty glass for about 10 years now, (have over 500 bits) and I still reckon your weight, if Mdina at all, is a much, much later piece. And it really, really looks to me as if the colours are produced by adding enamels and silver salts to a clear gather.
Think we may have to agree to disagree on this one. >:D
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I will bow to your greater experience and knowledge of this subject,however despite it's construction its odd looking base its colour in comparison to the other pieces screams Mdina,I've been wrong so many times since joining the GMB I think I'm getting a complex!Keith.
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:-*
Don't go getting a complex :o - contemporary colours are often bought in by makers from the same sources, and so identical colours of pieces can come from many different makers, light can alter colour, and men and women percieve colours the same colours differently - it's very subjective, unless you can measure the exact wavelength of the colour, taking it's density into account!
I often find bits of Mdina are described as orange with green strapping, when to me, they are clearly red with blue strapping.
And it's only asking questions looking at stuff, handling it, talking about it and debating it that anybody learns.
So, the colours of this weight, which I can only see photographic images of, look to you, to be the same as early Mdina. I agree that there it must be silver salts used to get the stripey, a blobby, yellowy/grey/blue bits.
The colours at Mdina were not consistent, they changed density, they were altered by the addition of silver salts, each piece is unique.
The silver salts turned clear glass yellow, red and amethyst glass to browns, blue glass to green. Colours were layered over each other, the silver salts vapourised and got into casings giving a strange, ethereal blue cloudiness, or onto the surface giving yellowy-blue iridesence....
But the texture of the background colours isn't right in this weight - there seems to be something similar to what goes on when two incompatible enamels encounter each other, or when clear tiny pieces of glass are added over another colour.
The shape isn't right, it's far too pointy, the base isn't right, it's far too small. Not for stuff of the same period as the other bits, which are around the mid to later '70s, maybe a bit later too.
(I've not yet seen the catalogues of the early shapes, though somebody did say they'd make them available on another forum a long time ago.)
ps. Having lots of bits doesn't mean anything - I could have lots of bits of rubbish!
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Thanks Sue,have learnt more on the GMB in the last few months than in 17 years of collecting,hoping for the Mdina book for Christmas,again thanks for all the explanations(and patience)Keith.
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I think Sue is correct. It is very likely that this is not Mdina.
One can never be sure from an image, and sometimes not even when handling a piece, but this piece looks as if it has been made with a clear base glass, rolled in gold ruby chips (probably K2 size) and then melted in. Once the chips have been melted in, pieces of 100% pure silver leaf have been place on the surface or picked up from the marver, and then melted in. There is a reaction between the various elements that turns the gold ruby into a golden tortoiseshell and the silver leaf adopts that bluey green tint.
As Sue points out, there is a similarity to the effect gained from the incompatibility of two colours and this suggests that in fact the silver could have gone on first and then the piece could have been rolled on the gold-ruby before melting in.
While I don't recognise it, it does look quite like some of my colour tests!
;)
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:-* Thanks Adam, it's so good to have the benefit of your expertise on technique and methods.
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Many thanks,Keith
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Just found this thread, Keith, im pretty sure your paperweight is not Mdina, inspired by, perhaps,
but its not right, i have a little bottle that you would think was Mdina, but again, not quite right,
(pic below) and thread http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,18422.0.html
I also totally agree with Sue on your unsigned pieces, the one non Mdina centre of 2nd image.
Cheers
Andy
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Hi folks.
The discussion on the general Mdina (or not) vases has now been split out and merged as a thread in the Glass forum (http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,29942.msg161771.html#msg161771).
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:-*
Thanks very much indeed, Kev!