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Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. => Malta Glass => Topic started by: glassobsessed on January 18, 2017, 07:17:40 PM
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The one on the left arrived today, necessitating this little gathering. ;D
John
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Verrry nice John ;D ;D
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Hi,
So nice to see the different styles..........
Are any or all 'Ice cut'...... ?
Thanks for showing us these.
Patrick. :)
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;D
Ah-ha! I've only seen one this shape before and it's mine. It's one I've always strongly suspected was Michael Harris' hand, and I think yours is too, John.
The way the core colours are worked is most like my MH signed one.
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Thanks Keith. Patrick, from the left, vases 1, 3 and 4 are cut ice. That would be nice Sue...
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Patrick, from the left, vases 1, 3 and 4 are cut ice.
I was expecting only no.2 to be ' Cut ice '......... :)
Thanks for enlightening me.
Patrick.
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Sue's has got the seaweed design on the inside ;D
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This one I sold some time ago, regretting it now! I can't remember if it was facet cut or not but I expect it was.
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Very observant, Lustrousstone!
yes, looking for the "seaweed" effect helps.
John's last pic looks awfully like my tall one, internally.
This is my signed one.
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some proper cobalt blue in the blue on that left hand one John?
Looks very similar to the blue swirls in my button rim fish vase.
m
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I don't think so m, I still can not capture an accurate photo of the cobalt blue, my camera cannot differentiate between the blues. I was going to have another go in daylight and I might as well try with my phone too, the camera in that must be at least eight years more modern than my old Canon.
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No I think you're right ... it would show as purply blue if cobalt.
m
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Best result so far is via my two year old phone, definitely need to invest in a new camera! Still room for improvement but this is a much better representation of the two blues.
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better representation of the two blues.
Are you saying there are two different blues used in this vase........ ?
I am only seeing one blue but the different thickness of the glass show a denser version of the same colour.
Patrick.
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I would say blown in light blue then 4 dips in dark blue, very nice!
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Spot on, two different blues, the darker being the fabled cobalt blue that was only used for a time after the glassworks was opened (once it ran out it was never replenished).
A variation of this fish vase is that it lacks the trails over the centre of the body.
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For comparison, this is a similarly shaped early Fish, but all in teal. No cobalt.
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Are you saying there are two different blues used in this vase........ ?
I am only seeing one blue but the different thickness of the glass show a denser version of the same colour.
Patrick.
Well I am now seeing two blues......... :)
Thank you Wolfie and John.
Patrick.
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Spot on, two different blues, the darker being the fabled cobalt blue that was only used for a time after the glassworks was opened (once it ran out it was never replenished).
Hi John, I'm not sure where this info came from? On speaking to Jim Munnelly he states that there were 4 pots when he was there, Light Blue, Dark Blue, Purple and clearish. Would you say there is a difference between the this Colbalt Blue and Dark Blue?
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When was Jim Munnelly working there?
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When was Jim Munnelly working there?
Started August 1971 and finished in August 1975 ...........
Patrick.
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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.
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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
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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?
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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.
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Just to add, Mark Hill briefly refers to the initial use of colour at Mdina on pages 21 & 22 of his book. ''The colour of a piece was also dependant on how much colourant had been added to the batch initially, and some colours such as amethyst purple or cobalt blue in its unmodified form were only used as final colours for a short period of time in the first year of production.''
I would imagine this information is likely to have come from the Harris family.
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Wolfie, give us some examples of this dark blue. Relying solely on memories that are more than forty years old will not be 100% reliable. That is the nature of human memory.
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Hi John, do you mean pics of pieces made in Dark Blue? if so I cant because I don't know what pieces are made in this colour. If Jim says they used a pot of dark blue when he was there then they did, i have no doubt about that. The private convos ive had and the detail Jim goes into about the processes he used he would not get something basic like that wrong IMHO.
i think very likely what Sue is taking about is an example of this Dark Blue.
Are you of the opinion that they only had 1 blue during Jims period there?
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Are you of the opinion that they only had 1 blue during Jims period there?
No, would not surprise me at all, various shades of blue crop up over the years and the addition of silver nitrate can have all sorts of further effects. However, none of the subsequent blues appear to be the same as the cobalt blue used in the trails on this vase.
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I'm positive most of the the cobalt bits we know of, are all pre-'71, when Michael Harris left and Jim arrived.
Marlene Bristow confirmed that my tricorn charger is by Harris, she remembered it.
I know John has a small cobalt piece by Harris, which came from Elizabeth's own collection of his work.
We do know, for certain, that Michael Harris worked from the cobalt pot.
Was there a period of overlap, with Jim being there before Harris left?
I am completely unconvinced that any post-Harris "dark blue" is related to the one cobalt pot of legend. :)
John's just posted a pic of the bit from Elizabeth's collection. ;D
There are just a lot of different shades of blue that appear, later on; some are really quite deep.
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Harris was booted out in 72.
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:-[
The '70s were a bit of a blur for me, because I was there. 8)
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Jim was definitely at Mdina with Harris for a while, 9 months maybe.
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Another Lollipop, smallest so far, also facet cut.
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Nice :)
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Thanks. The shape of this new one reminded me of the small lollipops made at Isle of Wight Studio Glass in the 70s.
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Stunning collection! We're just learning about ours, with much help and information from others on this site... attached a photo of ours (signed Michael Harris, Mdina Glass, Malta), we believe it to be (after seeking advice!) a faceted cut-ice lollipop.
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Sorry, rather late but yes you are spot on!
A fabulous bit of luck yesterday, for me anyway when a customer walked in and wanted to swap this lollipop vase for a large Kosta Boda Satellite vase. Happy days, this lollipop is a nice variation on the usual theme in amethyst and yellow ochre. It is quite large for a lollipop at over 22cm, very thick and heavy, asymmetric and unsigned.
A couple more examples in these colours:
https://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,36662.0.html
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That's lovely. Love the colours and the design!
m
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I'm still a bit grumpy and green around the edges. ;)