ann

Not mine:

Can't resist - - -

I don't know enough about Vitros to answer the question, but imo the whole surface of the marble desn't have to be veneered for the marble to be classified as a veneered one. Once something goes beneath the substrate, into the base glass, then you're talking something else.

Bogard?

Just a little something to throw in here about the colors of MFC slags, and the lack of colors outside the standard amber, blue, green, etc. (adding purple later for a little while) - - - 1- A reminder that the production goal in this time period was imitation agate. 2- MFC "bricks" look a lot more like "imitation agate" than transparent red slags do . . . 3- Transparent red was expensive and diffucult to produce; red didn't become commercially viable until gold was replaced by selenium . . . 4- I think Steph's "don't mess with success" philosophy is very likely. 5- MFC may have "dabbled In red" in the early years but there is, at present, no evidence to suggest MFC ever commercially produced transparent red slags. But there is enough evidence to say that it is unlikely.

I want some of what that chameleon's been smokin.' Maybe then I could figure some of this stuff out . . .

Guess I'm blind, but I can't find any sparklers . . . that Doug Ferguson "hatched alien egg" is nice. He's one of the first contemporary marble artists I got interested in.

OK, I give up. What the heck is going on here with the crazy dove? Love it --

I have no idea where "Cedar" came from. And I realize now that I've been forced to think about it . . . that I've just associated "Waxwing" with the beautiful muted colors of the bird, so I have no idea what "Waxwing" is really based on either. Shoot. Guess I'll dig out my old field guide.

Normally I would throw myself into the discussion of the English language since I'm a fanatic about that myself. But I'm too distracted by Dave's marble. I'm going to go back and stare at it some more . . .

So sorry to hear about Bert. We never met in person, but we corresponded fairly regularly about this and that. He called me the small marble lady . . . He found it amusing that I wouldn't classify anything over 1 1/8" a marble [just for my own collection, since I couldn't confine myself by time period, material, method of manufacture, or any other marbling thing, and I had to stop somewhere. And I couldn't get a good shooting grip on anything bigger than 1 1/8.] He said his biggest marble was about the size of a bowling ball. and he still thought of it as a marble. I thought of it as a sphere. Or an orb. Or a globe. We agreed to disagree. He was also helpful in my getting smaller contemporary marbles by people who didn't usually make them small enough for me . . . And he had some great old marbles (by their size -- I don't know what kind of game they might have been used in; may have been medieval period . . .) . . . And so forth. If his death causes me to feel such a loss, I can't imagine what his family must be feeling. My condolences.

I think Steph probably meant ivory when she said "a now-banned material." They look like they're old enough -- made or imported before the ban. I forget the acceptable dates, though.

Where I grew up in eastern North Carolina we had three gigantic pyracantha bushes in our back yard. Every autumn an awesome number of Cedar Waxwings would descend on them for two days, or until they were stripped bare. The Cedar Waxwings were very beautiful -- but to see those giant bushes covered and working alive with them was borderline spooky. Hitchcockian, even!

I have a couple like popculturism's. I currently have them in my Alley box, but not very decisively. I really don't know. I'm sure that helps a lot.

In addition to the digs, Michael Cahill's book on MFC (and he owns the MFC company's archives, including glass formulas, production notes, and samples of all the marbles they produced, etc.) also says "no red glass." I also think MFC "oxblood" was wrongly equated with MFC "red" in the early days of trying to figure this stuff out. As Steph suggested, (side note = in Henry Hellmers' batch book he sets out the formulas for MFC oxblood / carnelian that were brought from MFC to Akro Agate by that scoundrel Horace C. Hill.) I also understand gold red was both expensive and difficult to produce. Henry Hellmers at Akro mostly used selenium for transparent red. It was apparently less difficult to work with than gold, although not necessarily much less expensive, and I've seen some references to Hellmers being the glass chemist credited with making selenium "practical" to use in an "industrial" setting. He also has about 35 formulas for what he calls "copper ruby," mostly using "red copper oxide." And Peltier developed and produced the "cerise," their first red slag, using selenium, according to what I've seen. But there might be earlier formulas I don't know about. Yet. But for your gold-reclaiming question, mon, it doesn't look like there would have been enough gold involved for the effort. But I could be wrong. I'm no good at the economics of anything. You judge: Hellmers has 50 formulas for "gold ruby" and the amounts of metallic gold or gold chloride used vary from about 17 ounces down to measurements in grains, all in formulas that start with "First you take 1,000 pounds of sand . . ." I wish I knew exactly who made those few nice small red slags I have that LOOK like they should be MFC (Those nice nines! Those tails!) They don't look like the cerises at all, and most Akro slags don't seem to have any signature -- certainly no nice nines. Maybe it was just one anti-establishment type at Akro or something. Who didn't keep his job for very long!

Hi Chuck -- which colors are you talking about for the ribbons? Do they only come in certain colors or certain color combinations?

I do love a smooth-gaited horse . . .

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He's cast in his stall at the moment. Maybe later.

Christmas balls!

Well, I'm a cat person, but this "cats vs dogs" thing is pretty accurate . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MICmwRUzQ4A

I was out riding my stick horse just the other day . . .

Hey and welcome! Another Southerner, Although I have been trapped up here since 1980 . . . Ann

I'd bet on it. At least, they certainly tried to be relatively consistant with it. As always, I could be wrong. But I don't think so in this case.

I like "single fold" for the quacking ducks too.