akronmarbles

Source: Official catalogue of the New-York exhibition of the industry of all nations. 1853. "Imitation agate marbles in glass"

The marble scissor was used to make both the cane cut marbles and the punty rod gathered examples Jeroen.

This is from an unpublished manuscript in my collection from Herbert Kühnert, titled “Elias Greiner – Vetters Sohn. (1793 – 1864) Ein Lebensbild ”. I believe this was penned in 1966.

“Nun griff Elias Greiner die herstellung der glasmärbel auf und fabrizierte sie in allen möglichen varianten bald in marmorierung bald in achat, Bernstein, lapis-lazuli, topasfärbung. Seinem farbenwerk gliederte er eine schleiferei an und hatte bald mit seinen märbeln schönsten erfolge. Da sich bei den von Elias in den handle gebrachten kugeln ein grosser teil des hertsellungprozesses vor jedermanns augen in der gemeinsamen Dorfhütte abspielte, und da gerade in jenen jahren der missernte, der teurung, der sozialen und politischen wirren sowie des schlechten gangs der althergebrachten hüttenerzeugnisse jeder noch so kleine technische und kaufmännische fortschritt in der Lauschaer glasindustrie bald in den die preise hinabziehenden strudel des erbittertsten ond kurzsichtigsten.”

Translation

“Now Elias Greiner took up the production of glass marbles and produced it in all possible variants, imitating the veining of agate, amber, lapis lazuli, and topaz. The colored glasses were made into a marble that was then taken to a grinding shop and finally a most beautiful marble was completed. With the introduction of the glass balls by Elias, and the manufacturing process he brought forward, everyone’s eyes in the common village glasshouse fixed upon this idea, and in those years of the harvest failure, the social and political confusion as well as the bad course of the traditional products of each glasshouse, would be benefited and saved by such a small and technical innovation. The Lauscha glass industry soon heaped praises upon this new idea and swept away all bad feelings and short sightedness.”

Some German glass terms that might be used to describe marble attributes.

In German, ‘Schleiferei’ means grinding shop.

A ground pontil mark on a marble in German might be called ‘schleifgebirge’, as a description of the ground surface. ‘Facettenschliff’ is facet cut.

Shear mark is ‘Schnittmarke’, ‘Schnittnarbe’, or ‘Shnittmarkierung’.

Pontil or punty is ‘hefteisen’. Referring only to the metal rod. Scar is ‘narbe’. Pontil scar would be ‘Narbe gebildet durch einehefteisen’.

A ‘Kugelschere’ is a tool for making glass marbles.

Brian Graham

You will find this interesting....Baumann even references my old web page:

http://web.archive.org/web/20061004093426/http://www.akronmarbles.com/elias_greiner_vetter.htm

and yet another page from my old website...

http://web.archive.org/web/20061004093643/http://www.akronmarbles.com/pontil_variations.htm

faceted pontil = german made earliest glass marbles

melted pontil = James Harvey Leighton made marbles

both of these marble types are made identically - gathered one at a time - just finished differently

For shits and giggles, I sent Morphy's an email.....

I can't say for certain, but that does look very much like a few that I made back in 2006 or 2007. The size is right as well. I may have an example or two in my sample case - will take a look Wednesday when I am at my shop. The maroon is subsurface opaque orange. There should also be some clear matrix. Wish I could see it in hand.

This one looks very familiar....

http://morphyauctions.auctionflex.com/showlot.ap?co=31120&weid=26780&weiid=9751598&archive=n&keyword=navarre&lso=lotnumasc&pagenum=1〈=En

I agree that there are way too many CA's in this sale. Flooding the market will = low prices - I imagine many of those lots have a reserve.

Nice melted pontil Ohio marbles....

I have two available if anyone is interested. They both measure about 3/4"

Insert 10 foot pole - So what you are saying is that there are marbles of questionable provenance for sale on the open market which were manufactured by your company, for which there are no original sales records? Just making sure I'm not reading between the lines....

They are my creations.....seller has a smaller one for sale as well: 270971686706

Here is a 1 9/16" Royal Blue - available if anyone is interested...

Here's a few more - largest is just a 1/16" under 2" - middle is 1.5", and smallest is 1". These are all available as well :-)

Ric - Not sure what your marble is. I have never seen one like it. Duffy - yours is def an Akron made marble.

Not mine..agreed that it looks like it was made with a torch.

'view source' always works if you can read code - just look for the url of the wanted image - copy it and paste into a new window - open and save. This is how I save images loaded within ebay.

Looks like an ugly remelt...

Those are not from Payne - I only found hand gathered cobalt, amber, and green slags at the Payne site. There were also pieces of the earliest gob fed marbles at Payne. That was the business edge that Jenkins was trying to work with CA.

Some food for thought....let's say that a duplex machine makes about 2 marbles a second - this works out to 7200 an hour or 86400 a day - or 315,360,000 in a year. A little over 100 days of production would net you around 10 million marbles.

I have a white opaque almost 2" MFC industriual marble....ugly to sat the least..lol

This one is a little over 1 and 3/8.

Schwing! Awesome information....lol

Nice Mike! That's real info to hang a hat on rather than someone's family story. Stories are just that unfortunately. Can't lie with company records, articles of incorporation, cancelled checks, court documents, etc. It's called hard proof!

The company was incorporated and named on January 29, 1925. This is well before Fiedler's association with it. Fiedler's name never appears in any newspaper articles as well from the inception in Payne till the close of the plant in Cambridge. The common thread to all of the marble companies at this time was the Hartford Empire Co - they held a monopoly on just about every type of glass manufacturing patent - including gob feeders - Jenkins did work for Hartford Empire. I wouldn't doubt it if Peltier also worked with Hartford Empire. Akro Agate surely did.

Awesome information! Thanks for sharing. Does it give the name of the company?

Those are very nice!