What have I got?

[Shellkat]

Now I'm obsessed with nines....is there hope for recovery? Will my house ever get clean?

[Steph]

You for sure have a 9 on the blue one.  I think likely on the amber.

 

The blue is what we call a Japanese Transitional.  

 

I'll go with American-made on the amber.

Edited May 18, 2016 by Steph
silly typo

[JerryG]

Blue one is probably a Japanese transitional. Your one photo looks like it has the required pinch-pontil. Not sure of ages.

[Shellkat]

What is transitional? Something between a slang and a swirl? I've seen that term and not quite sure the meaning. I'm guessing it's about production. Yay, pinch pontil. I'm trying to learn pontils and mine are pretty beat up so it's hard to tell. 

23 minutes ago, Steph said:

You for sure have a 9 on the blue one.  I think likely on the amber.

 

The blue is what we call a Japanese Transitional.  

 

All go with American-made on the amber.

21 minutes ago, JerryG said:

Blue one is probably a Japanese transitional. Your one photo looks like it has the required pinch-pontil. Not sure of ages.

 

[Steph]

The word "transitional" has ... um ... transitioned in how it is used.

Mostly now I just see it for the Japanese marbles.  Which may be from the 30's.  Could be a little earlier.  They haven't been pinned down as far as I know.

 

Mostly the word "transitional" refers to a time between purely handmade marbles and purely machine-made marbles.  As our understanding of marble history has grown the word has mostly been replaced by less general terms, but it seems to have stuck with the Japanese marbles.  

 

So, like the handgathered slags from the early American companies, these would presumably have been created by a worker dipping a punty into a glass pot and then turning the glob around to pick up that tail of glass ... and then somehow cutting it, and dropping it onto the rollers for machine rounding.  But I don't know how the wrinkles got into the pontils.  Maybe they did their work at a cooler temperature than American companies tended to use.

 

 

So basically you have a Japanese slag, but we call it a transitional.

 

P.s., the official name for American slags -- the name used back when -- was "onyx".  

 

 

[lstmmrbls]

I consider hand gathered machine rounded marbles as true transitionals.  Most only consider them transitionals if the cut off is rough.  And many marbles that are called transitionals really are not IMO

[Shellkat]

Thank you guys. I read some stuff too.