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Dug Confetti, Other Frit Marbles, " Transitionals "


Steph

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These are 1/2" to 21/32", dug from the same dumpsite. They had larger kin, including confettis which were at least 1 and 1/8".

The one with blue spots has externally applied drizzle -- dark olive -- which dips into the blue in places + one interesting pinkish red striped rectangular patch. I think the rectangle is the same material as one the bits of 'frit' in the confetti. That's what I tried to show in the first pic.

2009_02_19_DugConfettiEtc_a.jpg

Is frit the right word? That piece in the confetti is not just a simple bit of colored glass. To me it looks like fine pink stripes maybe around a slender white rod. Under a loupe I see that the pink in the patch is transparent. Hard to tell otherwise.

The guy who sold them had other opaques with drizzle. Beautiful orange thin (really thin) swirl....or yellow.......or blue..........that did not swirl around the entire marble, just the upper part.

Let's see, the ones which might be called transitionals look familiar in a way, and different too, but maybe that's just because I don't have much experience with them. The two smallest look like they have reverse 9's. Maybe the middle sized one also, but it's a little more globby and harder to trace. The amber has more of a ying yang looking thing where I'd expect the 9.

To my untrained eye they appear to have been snipped off of punties. The green one looks the most cleanly snipped. The others look like there may have been a little bit of snapping along with the snipping. Each seems to have at least remnants of longish indented lines like the green but also a wider spot in the middle which looks like the glass might have been colder when that mark was made.

Looking at them all again, I think the pontils on those three look more like the pontil on the confetti than the one on the green. (edit: I wouldn't have thought of the green's shear mark as being much like the confetti's pontil, but with the others in between, I could see them as being on opposite ends of range of variation)

The mib with sprinkling of blue on one side and green on the other also had a sprinkling of pink or red once upon a time. But the frit has fallen out. It didn't come through clearly but that's what I tried to show in this next pic.

This mib has the softest looking pontil. Maybe like the others and maybe a little something done to it to smooth it out. ?

2009_02_19_DugConfettiEtc_c.jpg

2009_02_19_DugConfettiEtc_d.jpg

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I shall have to stop looking at the pontils for awhile. I notice something new about them each time I look.

I'll just note this last observation and then wait to hear what anyone else has to say. Here it is:

The green one might have more similarity with the others than at first it seemed. It appears to also have a sort of 2nd mark.

The amber's 2nd mark in the middle seemed almost like a 2nd shear perpendicular to the first, but that was too weird a thought to be able to get a handle on. But it seems worth commenting on now because the green's "sort of 2nd mark" is also sort of perpendicular.

It is two indentations across the line from each other..

MarksOnGreenSwirl.jpg

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Whoa.... Hold on a second.....

What sort of dump site??? Is it a glass manufacture dump site? Or just an old general use site??

Remember... Europeans have a rich past in the occupations and / or trade businesses of Eastern countries... Full families often spent several years living in foreign countries, or moved entirely...

Finding European toys in an Eastern dump site only tells us that they were there. NOT that they originated from there....

Now, if the site is a known area of glass production, that could be a breakthrough...

There was a very well known history of paperweght production in China. This can be found in paperweight archives... It was during the 1930's and included reproductions of several high-end weight styles... It was also the origin of the "birdcage" marbles...

So, the blending of this paperweight production and some marble production has a little bit of known history... But, a lot more needs to be learned before making any serious conclusions....

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I'll ask again, but I'm pretty sure that's all the seller knew. He goes to China periodically and buys them from a digger.

There are two things I find interesting about these 'transitionals' in comparison with the handmades and in comparison with slag-type marbles from other sources.

One is that I think I might be seeing a continuum of pontil types, possibly linking the transitionals with the frit marbles, as if the same shearing tool may have been used on both types, but maybe under different conditions. more hastily on the transitionals? different person? different year?

A completely different thing which I would still find curious even if I'm wrong about the pontils:

The reverse 9s. I don't pay the best attention to threads about slag-type marbles since I haven't made a lot of connection with them yet, but I seem to remember that it's very rare to have the tail wrapping in the direction it does on these. So if my recollection is correct, I wonder if these are signs of a different marble making tradition.

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I can't remember if I've ever seen an American-made with a real reverse 9.

The last time I remember the subject coming up I think all the possible examples turned out to be a regular 9 more or less but the ribbon was so tall that we could see it from the other side and so it looked reversed. Or maybe some other sort of oddness but I think they didn't really look like true reverse 9's on closer examination.

A true reverse 9 would be be very rare anyway, right?

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