ann

Last weekend I stumbled into a marathon of "Murder She Wrote" . . .

You should check out some books by Stephen Ambrose -- beautifully written -- he wrote Band of Brothers and D-Day, among others . . . and on the other side of things, I forget the name, but the book by Albrecht Speer . . . who was an architect and came up with the "look" of everything (the "Cathedral of Light" at the Nuremburg rallies, the SS uniforms, etc.) Pretty interesting.

Well, that makes sense about the marbles Akro had before the corks. But I've always thought patches were later rather than earlier. So do we have to reconsider that? Do you think the mushrooms could be that old? I just wish I could see those marbles better . . .

I agree. Just look at the change of eye type from the early Santa to the later one . . .

I'm not sure it's too early for Akro. Akro's glass chemist, Henry Hellmers, remembered machine-made marbles starting in 1926 or '27, and in AMMM it talks about Early's spinner cup coming into use between 1928 and 1930 . . .

Maybe Winnie will post her wonderful box of transitionals here . . . Because of that box, I just recently loosed all mine, which had been carefully separated by pontil type, into one big herd, and ignoring pontils altogether, tried a sort according to my perception of the glass. It was interesting. What looked like the poorer glass had transparent-colored bases, and what looked like better glass was both transparent-based and opaque-based. In those categories, tried a kind-of-sort by skillfulness-of-nine. I've left them there like that for the time being. Don't know if I've learned anything by it or not.

That's the same conclusion I came to!

That's what I meant. Nothing made after1969 is "old" to me! That's the year I should have initially graduated from college, if I had not just wandered off somewhere . . .

:lol:

Rule of thumb -- Akro sparklers usually have at least 5 distinct colors and very clear transparent colorless areas; Master sunbursts have fewer colors, are generally duller, the colors are sometimes more transparent, and there's less very clear glass. I sure do love that sparkler box. I'd consider that one on the left a type of foreign sparkler too.

I think Josh said it wasn't that old because the bag doesn't have a seam running down the middle of the back of the bag, like the older bags do -- I'd probably open it too!

I have gray Rainbos too, mostly translucent, a couple opalescent; one of the Ravenswood type Alan posted (one of my favorites); and this Alley, which looks suspiciously like Galen's bottom one, except the gray looks darker on mine . . .

Oh boy. Not too hard for me to believe they reached transparent copper ruby accidentally before achieving the oxblood they were apparently aiming for. Harder for me to believe "many transparent red marbles were made and sold." And then dropped from the list because it was too tricky to control. I think it was more likely the other way around -- if it was tricky to control MFC would never have added transparent copper ruby to the regular production of MFC. Especially if it was oxblood they were interested in. I'll have to go back to Hellmers' batch book. Keeping in mind that the early and golden age marble makers didn't call oxblood oxblood. I think, but don't know for sure, that Pelt used selenium for their early Cerise marbles, which were hand-gathered. Maybe confirmation (or denial) of that will magically appear here . . .

I see what you're talking about -- I see a few more, too -- but none have a reddish color tinge on my monitor. It could easily be a star, a planet, or a satellite. Somewhere there's a site (of course there is) where you can look up satellites by time and location (well, maybe not all satellites), so maybe you could confirm or eliminate satellite by going to work on that . . . but it makes me tired just thinking about it. There are times when I can live with uncertainty.

Have the MFC papers / archives been searched again in light of these recent finds? For mentions, or formulas, or records of experiments, etc.? That would be interesting to know . . .

Thought this might be a reasonable place to add this, for those who are interested. It's from JABO: A Classic, Sturtz & Johnson, and is a quote from Brian Graham. I think it's a nice, clear explanation -- I know it helped me when I was first trying to really understand the oxblood thing. Belated thanks, Brian! "All you need to know to understand oxblood: CU11 > Cu1 > Cu. "It's pure chemistry. It is a redox reaction. When you strip away the oxygen from copper oxide, you end up with an atom of copper. These copper atoms come together in the glass network to form individually suspended copper atoms and groups of connected atoms in the form of crystals. "At the very start of this reaction, when the right amount of individual copper atoms are suspended in the glass, you make 'copper ruby' or a fine transparent red. If the copper crystals are small, you have oxblood. If the copper crystals grow larger, you end up with 'goldstone' [aventurine] or what marble collectors call 'lutz' glass. With the oxygen still bound to the copper, the colors produced are blues and greens. "Redox can be achieved through adjustments in furnace atmosphere or through additions to the glass batch -- generally both methods were employed. Traditional redox additions for glass batches include iron oxide, tin oxide (helps keep certain metals in solution in glass), or forms of carbon, including sugar, coal dust, or sawdust. "Sometimes a marble maker or glassworker would remelt copper ruby glass and it spoils and turns livery. The copper ruby color is quite fugitive in nature and is hard to hold in a glass melt. The glass reacts with the atmosphere and the redox reaction starts to reverse itself . . . " . . . By the mid-to-late 1920s, reds were more easily produced with selenium and cadmium. The more difficult to melt copper-based reds just seemed to fall out of favor."

Oh good. I thought I had missed something!

Additional interesting timeline events of note . . . Fiedler leaves Akro when Henry Hellmers is hired as glass chemist there . . . Fiedler goes to Peltier but fails, as noted in correspondence mentioned above (which I've read too) . . . and Christensen Agate ceases manufacturing (and fails) about the same time Hellmers is hired as the glass chemist for Cambridge Glass . . . Just sayin.'

Pretty sure there's an article by David Chamberlain on the Nova run at Joe'smarbles. Don't think there were any clear. I'll go back and look. Those Al posted (from Gino Biffany) look to have a couple additional types from what I remember. But I'm old . . .

Well. I could probably forgive you for the Kurly Blush if you sent me one of those Carnivals . . .

I didn't know Cairo had one of those . . . nice!

Sure is. Especially since it's not mentioned in the MFC book. Hmmmm . . . Yep, that big chunk of serious green is the green I was talking about, Alan -- nice cullet! And nice to see the two colors for comparison.

It's about making marbles that have oxblood showing in the final product, as far as I'm concerned. So we know for sure MFC and Akro made their own oxblood cullet. Which, when added to their tank glass during a run may or may not have produced oxblood in the marbles themselves, depending on the vagaries of both the stuff and the process (reduction atmosphere, etc.) So maybe other companies bought oxblood cullet and threw it in their tanks with the same results. So? Same with aventurine, 'cause it's the same stuff. So? So sometimes marble makers got oxblood by accident. So? Why do you think aventurine is called aventurine? "Cause one day one particular Venetian glassmaker accidentally produced it. Basically, "by adventure," in Italian. His family held exclusive rights (sort of like a patent) to aventurine for years and years. Those German guys who made "lutz" marbles bought their aventurine from that family. They didn't make it themselves. Does that bother you? It's interesting, I like knowing it. But it doesn't bother me. Or make me like the marbles a little less. The question that's ultimately the most significant for me is "does the marble have oxblood in/on it?" I think a lot of collectors, especially new ones, feel the same.

Hey Bill -- I thought the opal ladies had that pale yellowish opalescent glass base? But I could sure be wrong. What is that one with the weird name? Kurly Blush or something like that? That's the one I thought had plain clear. But although I have one, I've never been comfortable calling it that . . . For some reason the word Kurly, spelled like that, gives me a little case of the creeps . . . seems related to scary klowns . . . Now somebody's gonna tell me it was named after their granddad or something . . . Gotta go dig out that Alley thread again . . .

OK, a little something for the weekend . . .