Topic: I am no mdina expert. ID = Mtarfa, "Cobra Vase"

[essi]

Picked this up today,liked the unusual shape.
It is marked on the base mdina and stands 145 mm tall.
Any ideas as to where this fits into the mdina timeline.
The top seems to have been made to hold a candle.
Thanks for any help.

[Ivo]

Are you sure it doesnt say Mtarfa?

[essi]

I do beg your pardon it does mtarfa.
Maybe less desireable but i still like it.
thanks for the input ivo

[chopin-liszt]

This is definitely Mtarfa. A very strange design indeed - one I don't often think works, but yours is slightly unusual.

The colours used in it are a bit more complex than you first might suspect, they arise from the use of silver chloride or silver nitrate, which reacts with the hot glass. and the colours that had been added to it, in this case, probably silver nitrate, with red glass - which goes brown.

This is, I believe, quite an early Mtarfa colourway, it's one I have collected a bit, and yours is the first snakey bottle I've seen that uses this colourway. Normally, it just comes white and another colour of splodges.

[essi]

Thanks for that sue. To me the colours looked so mdina I just did not focus hard enough on the signature!!!.
Have since seen some images on the net of the more colourfull ones but they seem to have an opening in the main body of the vessel.
thanks again

[chopin-liszt]

 

That's how and why I ended up collecting some of this early Mtarfa stuff - it wasn't until I'd found enough of it, and some of it marked, that I realised it was completely different to Mdina in how the colours are worked.

There seems to be a greenish tinge on top of what would be yellow in Mdina; and Mdina didn't do splodgy stuff with silver salts.
Spometimes, it appears with a lovely blue in it - also quite distinctive of Mtarfa and not Mdina.

[essi]

Lesson learnt. (till next time ha ha)

[chopin-liszt]

Some pics. First is a group of Mtarfa bits in this colourway, the second is a group which does contain inky blue enamel colouring (but it does get a bit confused with the blues that appear because of the silver reactions. You can see some of it towards the top of the pieces - there are clear blue splodges.
The last image is of a snail, just because it is in this colourway - and because I adore it and it's a chance to show it off.

[essi]

Thanks for the pictures Sue,they raised my thoughts about mtarfa glass.
Nice collection.
Thanks again

[chopin-liszt]

You're welcome. I hope seeing the load together will help you to be able to identify this colourway again - and not get it muddled with Mdina - which I did at first too.