Topic: Mdina Acid-Etched Cylinder Vase

[LarryB]

Hi, I hope someone can give me background on this Mdina acid-etched cylinder vase (17 x 12cms) in a rich, irridescent purple. The vase is deeply grooved (i.e. incised - see close-up photo) to produce a random pattern of panels. Neighbouring panels are alternately a rich, metallic mirror-like purple lustre, and a matt metallic purple lustre. It's a colour I associate with carnival glass (or Harris's I.o.W. glass), but I don't associate it with Mdina. However, the base is marked "Mdina" in the familiar rolling script and, judging by the base wear, it's not a youngster. The underlying base colour is clear glass. Any help with background, age, etc, will be very much appreciated. Thanks, Larry.

[LarryB]

I'm having trouble posting the other photographs. Please bear with me! Larry.

[chopin-liszt]

 
It is a reasonably early bit of Mdina, possibly mid '70s or later?
It is not one that I have seen much of at all.
I have a bowl in this design, and chriscooper posted another piece a while back.

It isn't acid etched, the texture hs been achieved with the use of strapping, marvered in a little. To be honest, I don't know how it works out that the iridesence on the strapping is mirror-like and the rest is slightly duller.

The script on the base of my bowl is difficult to pin a date to. Initially, it looks like the very early loopy thin script, but it does appear to read Molina - but it's not the late tiny Molina one from the '90s.

Utter nightmare to photograph, isn't it? I tried and tried to do mine, to show chriscooper, but couldn't come up with anything that even half resembled it.

That's how I can recognise your bit!  It's got interesting reds in it too, hasn't it, when you look at it with the light coming through it?

[glassobsessed]

Photographing it with a dark or black background should get light reflecting off it, then it will look moor like it does 'in the flesh'.

John

[Baked_Beans]

These are the only examples of dated Mdina glass sigs. I have which are similar. The loopy 'M s 'and the '7' are very similar on both these examples I have posted here and the 'M' is similar to yours. The 7's have little 'ticks' to the base of the vertical bit  . All the 'a' s' are different but some are joined and others aren't . They might well be all by the same hand but I'm no handwriting expert 

 p.s. The first photo is the base of a goblet and the date reads 1977 , the second is the base of a knight chess piece and is 1973 . ...just for clarification 

[chopin-liszt]

Even the very early marks cannot be pinned down to a date, honest.
The marks were made by anybody who had the free time to do so, so there are variations.

I did once try to catalogue all the different script marks, but got a bit lost once I got to 25 - I only collected earlyish stuff, to see if anything could be made of them and dates - there is nothing really defined.

My worry about these being an early-early script are that the M is too loopy.

It is as much the style that pins it to being possibly only slightly post-Harris - that and its scarcity. It doesn't seem to have been a range that "caught on" - if it even was a "range", so I am suspecting it might have been vaguely experimental, or they just decided they didn't like it.

[LarryB]

Many thanks for your comments. Sue, you confirmed my own thoughts when you say it might be a test piece, or a range that simply didn't appeal to the customers. As John says, you need special lighting, otherwise it would look rather dowdy on the glasswork's display shelf alongside the usual exuberant colours. In any event, I have a fondness for "orphans and oddballs" rather than mainstream Mdina, so I'm definitely keeping it. Thanks, Larry.

[chopin-liszt]

 

You can keep your sticky mitts away from MY Mdina oddballs. 

I have had quite enough trouble finding them, since others started collecting them too!

Should we start a "show and tell" thread for Mdina oddballs? Anybody else interested?

[Baked_Beans]

Good idea,

How about " Mdina , the rare and obscure revealed " ...wish I had something rare and obscure 

[chopin-liszt]

This is my rarest "best and obscure" Mdina oddball.
Unsigned, it is by Michael Harris, the only one known, it has been confirmed as absolutely correct by Marlene Bristow, who remembered it being made.
It's a tricorn charger in cobalt blue, decorated with silver chloride covered turqoiuse strapping (the sort of thing I normally describe as a "seaweed" pattern when found on Mdina, although this is unusual in having the strapping put in a spiral, rather than random.