ann

Aw jeeze, I really hate to do this, but I have to agree with Galen here regarding the term "restoration." A classic car can be "restored" if you are able to get the correct period replacement parts -- a 1955 Chevy BelAir fender for your 1955 BelAir, for example (although I'm not sure how car restorers feel about the repaint, which would have to involve new paint even if the paint was made to the same formula as the original.) But I don't think you can do the same for a marble. I think I'd be more inclined to consider using another word that was brought up recently -- conservation. I worked fairly closely with some conservation people for a long while (both object and painting conservation), and thinking of some of the things I saw them do I think the word might be appropriate. Let me think about it and see if I can remember a good example or 2 that might be similar . . . I love James Alloway.

Do you think it could still have some usefulness as a term? If we could clarify the meaning somehow?

IMO too, and I like them quite a bit, and have MFC, Pelt, and Akro ones. But I don't have a CAC one so I think you should give me one of your CAC examples 'cause you have a bunch and I don't have any. Never hurts to try.

I'd be very curious to hear if you can take a reworked marble and tell if it was ground/polished or reheated. Mainly a pontil thing? What if someone got sneaky and after reheating fudged new pontil marks somehow? Just curious, since I've only seen polished work and not reheated . . . although I have a great candidate for a reheating, if I could overcome my innate reluctance to alter a marble. But I believe I may be getting there.

And as long as we're whining (at least I'm whining, not speaking for anyone else), why aren't MFC slags called transitionals, when assuredly they are, by the "handgathered but machine rounded" definition? Is it just that we need these kinds of names (like "West Virginia swirl") if we don't (yet) have a specific company to attribute them to? Maybe as we learn more about the marbles from Navarre, Barberton, etc. (as well as other marbles that sometimes get called transitionals) the term "transitional" will begin to fade? (Like "WV swirl" being replaced by Alley, Heaton, Ravenswood, etc., as we learned to distinguish them from each other.) I don't know. Seems like it would be a useful term -- if it were consistantly applied.

Not sure from just the one pic, but there it looks like a solid (jelly) core rather than a divided core. Couple more pics maybe? Nice save.

This has been my understanding too. Also regardless of the type of pontil. But it's a term that has not always been applied consistantly. Admittedly there are problems with it when applied (as it sometimes is) to ground-pontil, melted-pontil and regular pontil slags and opaques, some of which were not machine rounded, and so forth and so on, as far as issues go . . . I've been trying to avoid the term lately, and just use the pontil descriptor instead. Not entirely satisfactory, though. Would love to hear some good, rational ideas! (Nice marbles Winnie!)

Had a good look at Kohoutek and Halley, and have been known to decamp to dark places for the Persied meteor shower, so I just wanna see it. Hope it's a blazer. But not a scorcher, y'unnerstand. I long for one I can see with the naked eye in the daytime . . . not, however, if it was going to be the last thing I was going to see . . . although . . . that wouldn't be too bad, considering some of the alternatives . . .

I have one of these orange/red ones that light up like that (2-seam day-glo orange) under black light. It was given to me as a Pelt (along with a few other types) by Art Jones (everyone take a moment to remember him fondly!) a few years ago . . . with good Peltier provenance.

Yep, that's the one. Too bad mine and yours can't have beautiful children together . . . just a thought . . .

Great pic of a great marble! I got one of these from Alan B. back in the day, and they're heck to photograph. Congrats.

I'm hung up on the seediness of the orange too.

Oh wowwwwww

Move over, Steph. (Same colors as Alley's West Virginian)

Chromium makes green. I don't know about the aventurine part. Referring to my memory lapse earlier, the guy that accidentally discovered gold aventurine was Vincenzo Miotti (1644-1729). The city of Venice granted him the exclusive right to make it in 1677, and it stayed in the family until the Miotti Company closed in 1791. Then all heck broke loose in Venice and elsewhere (including Bohemia), with people scrambling to make their own. Some were more successful than others, but Venice is apparently still the principal supplier. I wouldn't mind having those slag glasses, either, jeeperman!

At the museum where I worked, which shall remain nameless, it didn't look like there was much security in the galleries either. But there's more than you think, besides a guard lounging around nearby and a roped-off area in front of a biggie. We had a laser system that regularly scared the hell out of people, much to the amusement of security and any staff who happened to be passing by. The beams ran from corner to corner, about 1 1/2 or 2 feet from the plane of the wall. If someone broke the plane (by leaning in to get a closer than was comfortable for us look), an alarm shrieked and the hapless leanee invariably squealed and levitated, just a little bit. They then would slink off in shame, never to trust us again . . .

Ow, I want that first one!!! please please please ah -- I forgot. Begging is unbecoming.

I've been doing a lot of reading over in the bead world, and in the larger glass world, and basically lutz is aventurine, a precipitate of copper, no matter how you slice it. Accidentaly discovered by I-forget-his-name-Italian in the year I-forget-exactly-but-I'll-look-it-up-again, held by him and his family as a Venetian monopoly until the middle of the 19th century or so. So for a couple hundred years, everybody who wanted some had to get it from Venice. It occurrs so often with green and blue because copper is usually involved in both of those colors-- undoubtedly how what's-his-name ^^up there^^ discovered the process in the first place (the word aventurine comes from the Italian aventure, by chance, by accident). It is tricky to control, as Jeeperman says. But if copper is in the formula from either Alley or Jabo or Sammy's, it's aventurine. Just like it is in what many of us call "lutz" on the old handmades. [For rock/mineral people, copper is found in association with turquoise and malachite. Makes perfect sense.] We can argue about calling it "lutz," if anybody wants to, but there really isn't anything to argue about when it comes to the stuff itself. I'd like to just dump the term "lutz" entirely -- it's irrelevant anyhow (like "bennington") -- and simply use the color descriptor. Gold aventurine. Green aventurine. Silver aventurine. and so forth. But that's just me. My only real gripe is that I don't have enough marbles of any description with that glittery stuff you get when you mess with copper. Of any period. I can't believe I missed that one >>>> walks away muttering >>>> Bead with lutz . . .

Exactly. And some are so dark and dense they have every appearance and characteristic of black. They might as well be black, and some may in truth be black, meeting all of the requirements for it . . .

Lutz is aventurine. And it does look like they could have been experimenting with aventurine at Alley, since aventurine "cullet" has been found there . . . Anyway, I have one where the aventurine appears both silver and gold, on different parts of the marble. Weird. I just can't believe I missed that on ebay, Jeeperman. I'm getting old.

Hi Akronmarbles -- I'd hoped you'd come in. I think what you've told us is very much relevant to the "mixing all colors together makes black," if you're talking about materials (as opposed to light). And thanks for reminding me Dani, I forgot about my few antique Germans with black. They're very, very black. Not that I intend to argue the point either way. Just that over time I've come to understand that occasionally you'll find a real black. But it was cheaper to just make a very dark purple or a very dark blue or green, so that's what you're usually seeing.

Picking up from another thread, I thought it might be interesting to start a topic that came up along the way . . . I think that most of us have learned that there is no truly black glass -- it's generally a very dark purple, or blue, or, less commonly, green. I know that it is occasionally possible to tell what "color" the black really is (when even a tiny bit flows over or under white), and I've seen that on my own marbles. However, long ago and far away I was a geology major (for 2 half-forgotten semesters), and therefore I know that there is a naturally-occuring black glass called obsidian. Once lava. If anyone here has held a flaked obsidian blade and stared hard at the vaunted sharp edge (surgeons use it today) you've seen that it's black. Where it thins, it thins into grayness, And yes, of course I tried it out. Stupid move. Way worse than a paper cut. And then I got a copy of the recently-published batch book that belonged to Henry Hellmers, Akro's glass chemist in the 1920s and again in the early 30s (he was lured away by Cambridge Glass for awhile). He recorded 37 formulae for black / ebony/ hyalith glass, including 5 old German ones and four for Cambridge Glass. I copied out three of them -- two from Akro Agate and one he developed for Alley Agate, because you can see his tweaking with both the chemicals and the amounts. For Akro Agate, what he called "pot" glass, used for striping as opposed to a base color ("tank" glass), he did two batches on 5/13/28, each of which he called "Black Opal." His notes say "Dense, good." All measurements are in pounds. Formula #1 sand 1000 soda 360 nitrate 40 manganese dioxide 25 cobalt 1 1/4 feldspar 250 fluorospar 110 sodium fluorosilicate 40 Potassium bichromate 5 nickel oxide 2 1/2 Formula #2 sand 1000 soda 360 nitrate 37 1/2 manganese dioxide 25 cobalt 1 7/8 feldspar 300 fluorospar 102 sodium fluorosilicate 50 potassium bichromate 6 1/4 nickel oxide 2 1/2 On 10/2/32 he made this batch for Lawrence Alley at Lawrence Glass Co., with the note "for toy marbles" sand 600 soda 300 limestone 60 coal 30 manganese dioxide 80 cobalt 1/2 potassium bichromate 7 sulfur 5 I'll leave you with a few more things to keep in mind while pondering. When speaking of pigment, black is the combination of all colors, while white is the absence of all of them. [When speaking of light, black is the absence of all colors, and white is the combination of all of them.] If you have something you've made a very, very dark purple (with manganese, say), and add other things to make it dense and completely opaque -- to seem to the eye to be black (like some Indians, for example) . . . isn't it black? What do you think?

Take your time. ^^^foot tapping^^^

And we might have to rethink this black glass thing. I know it's always supposed to really be dark purple or blue, and most of the time I'm sure it is . . . but in Hellmers' batch book he has formulae very clearly labeled "black glass." Since he was Akro's glass chemist for awhile, I think it's worth looking into. Unfortunately I don't have the place or the wherewithall to mix up a batch, especially when the recipe starts with 1,000 pounds of sand. But I'll copy it/them out and any seasoned glass chemists here can tell us what color they think it would produce . . .

Mmmmm. Me too. A pic of the upper left corner one, the white base with the blue curlies? And the brown slag second from right also in the top row?