Glass Message Board
Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. => British & Irish Glass => Topic started by: jag1070dog on May 05, 2015, 07:57:11 PM
-
HI Lady's & Gents
Ive been collecting glass for about 5 years so I'm no expert. I purchased a vase recently From eBay The base reads Isle of Wight Hunt Ball 1st February 1985 and signed by Michael Harris. This is a truly stunning Azurene Lollipop Vase 9" tall with masses of gold inclusion. The engraving is very fine, precise and extremly crisp perfectly level the signature is extremely accurate and identical to that of Michael Harris.
I have a slight concern regarding its authenticity due to the low price I paid & the low number of bids the vase achieved.
Any advise would be really appreciated
-
Hi and welcome. :)
It looks ok from what I can make out, thanks for posting directly to the board and for resizing properly - much appreciated.
If you have some talcum powder, could you rub a little over the marks with your thumb to bring them out, and retake the pic? If you don't have talc, a little cornflour or even ordinary flour would do, but flour can be gungy to get off if it gets wet.
A pic of the whole beast would be nice. Is is alll gold foil, or is there silver too?
With the recession, nothing is really doing too well just now, Mdina and IoW are not flying, they're just limping along. It's a good time to be buying.
-
The signature looks spot on, kosher, genuine.... A photo of the whole vase would be good (just so we can drool over it).
John
-
hi Guys
This is the item any ideas of value????
-
Whatever you just paid for it probably. The collectors would have seen it
-
Agreed about the value.
It looks as if it's all gold, no silver foil that I can see there, so it's (technically) Gold Azurene.
Has it been sprayed with an irridescent finish or is it plain? (It looks plain, the stannous chloride spray for the irridesence was a later thing.)
-
Hi Sue the vase has a plain finish the Gold is just under the surface. A bueatifull peice I paid just over £200 which i felt was a bargain, just looking for a little reassurance thats all, Oh and to show it off :P
regards
jason
-
That's a fine price - especially with a signature. Honest!
There are different finishes to Azurene, depending on when they were made. This one is in perfect keeping with having been made by Michael Harris, the straight gold, without the iridescent spray. Probably a bit more unusual than ones with both gold and silver.
I have two (unsigned) myself - one is a very early experimental one, where the silver foil has done a lot of reacting with the glass, and the other, which is a lot later, and has the stannous spray on it.
I like the way the foil has been worked on the surface of your lollipop - but then, I tend to like how Michael Harris worked stuff!
-
Hi Jag, I have split off your request about the (rather nice) spiralled vase and moved it into the general Glass forum.
-
Cheers Kev still getting to grips with the forum
Thanks everyone for your help so far
-
Just to agree -- a nice vase and the signature looks 100% genuine. The price you paid was a moderate bargain, in my opinion, not a massive bargain. Remember Azurene was made in huge quantities, though Gold Azurene was less common since it cost significantly more to make at the time. Possibly buyers didn't notice it was Gold Azurene and passed it over. It is not always obvious from eBay pictures. If it was sold in the UK then I missed it too! :( A signature boosts the value a lot; triple an unsigned piece is typical.
I wouldn't agree with Sue that prices for IOW Studio Glass has waned or gone off the boil recently. I was speaking to the leading dealer and most expert person I know about IOW glass a couple of weeks ago (here's looking at you Ron) who made an analysis of sale prices and found that the average increase has been 11% annually for the last seven years. That correlated with my gut feeling of a 50% increase over that time frame. Of course it varies, depending on the design, how common it is, etc. The rarer bits are rocketing in price in my experience, while more common pieces are not so buoyant, as expected.
Anton