Topic: Mdina ink pot vase polished pontil

[flying free]

Since there seems to be Mdina talk today, I thought I'd post a pic of an ink pot vase I have.
I'm curious to know whether this is early (i.e when Michael Harris was there) or not.  Curious because it has iridescence on the surface of the piece as well as lots of silver chloride streaks in it. Its not showing up very well in the pictures under evening lighting, but there is a huge swirl of milky cloudy iridescence right round the piece. I have very few pieces of Mdina and apart from the little jug I posted a while ago, which I think also has some iridescence to it, my other pieces dont have this.
It has a wideish neck opening and not ground for a stopper and has a polished pontil mark on the base.  
m

[suzygpr]

Ooooh lovely colours, any chance of a shot of the base?  Looks fairly early to me. 

I have three ink pots, all with stoppers but none are ground as the stoppers are not meant fit closely - the stems are much thinner than the opening.  Two of mine are early ones- concave polished pontils; One has a flat polished base and footed - this is a later, straight sided pot.  I'll see if I can take some pics to show you.

Suzy xxx

[suzygpr]

For some reason, and I'm sure it's my techno-ignorance that's to blame, my pics are huge on here so I'll post them over a couple of posts.








Cont...

[suzygpr]

Later pot.





HTH

Suzy xxx

[Lustrousstone]

Lovely pots.

The size is 'cos you are pasting them in somehow (You can't be that techno-ignorant if you can do that) rather than using the attach facility, which creates a blow-upable thumbnail  :kissy:

[suzygpr]

Cheers Christine, you're quite right I'm not attaching them.  I've been using the Insert Image button above, I'll try to rmember for next time.

XXX

[chopin-liszt]

If you ever find a singular stopper with a narrow stalk, it can be happily plonked in.  :thup:

I believe when these were originally sold, stoppers were optional - they were made in a one size-will-do-all, so a stopper could simply be selected from a batch of them and added to the pot. They are happily interchangable.

Polished round pontil marks were not continued after Michael Harris left or it may have been until after Vicente Boffo left - we still don't know how long he stayed at Mdina before going to Malta Decorative Glass, but it was very probably no more than a few months, if that. They were definitely stopped by then - too much extra work for a small overworked workforce trying to keep up with demand.

Lovely pot, m - loads of stuff going on, and lovely semi-rounded shape!

[flying free]

Oooh thanks for all that info Sue and Suzy.  I sold my amethyst one a little while ago.
I've taken a pic of the base but had to take the pic of the iridescence with a flash as it wouldn't show properly, so it looks like a milky cloud, but in reality it appears as mirror iridescence , very shiny.

[Greg.]

That's a good picture M, shows the detail, some great colouring.

I had wondered about these ink pots, primarily about the stoppers. Seen a few around although some with stoppers and some without, hadn't realised that they were optional.

Nice pot.

Greg