Topic: Mdina Lollipop vases

[Patrick]

When was Jim Munnelly working there?

Started August 1971 and finished in August 1975 ...........

Patrick.

[glassobsessed]

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.

[chopin-liszt]

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".

[WhatHo!]

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?

[chopin-liszt]

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.

[Greg.]

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.

[glassobsessed]

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.

[WhatHo!]

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?

[glassobsessed]

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.

[chopin-liszt]

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.

There are just a lot of different shades of blue that appear, later on; some are really quite deep.