nancy cooper

Well, Yes......

My daughters and I are thinking about going to be able to actually see awesome marbles. It's not too far from here. It sounds fun. Nancy

I LOVE this!!

Thanks guys. I'm probably on the right track with this one. Here is some interesting info I found on a bead site describing the way they're made that might explain some of the things I have noticed on my 'bead'..."quack" (LOL) "...Whiteheart beads were made using a method known as "winding." With this method, beads were made individually by drawing a molten glob of glass out of the furnace and winding it around an iron rod. Glass of another color could then be added, or the bead could be decorated with a design. Coloring agents were added to the molten glass: cobalt made blue; copper produced green; tin made a milky white; and gold resulted in red (which resulted in the red whitehearts being an expensive bead, the more gold the darker the red). Wound beads from a master glassmaker were so perfect that it was hard to find a seam where the different molten glasses merged. These pieces were cut into beads of various sizes. The cut beads were placed in a large metal drum containing lime, carbonate, sand, carbon, and water. While the metal drum turned, heat was applied to the outside causing the rough-cut edges to be smoothed. After the beads were smooth, they were cleaned and then placed in a sack of fermented bran and vigorously shaken to polish them..." Nancy Thanks and now back to the rest of my daughter's hundreds of marbles...I have some pictured at a Picasa web page: http://picasaweb.google.com/coyoteleader/DropBox?authkey=Gv1sRgCO751Zr1v5mIggE&feat=directlink#

This marble/bead/hat-pin/homemade x-mas or whatever it is thing has really gotten to me. Any ideas on how to go about researching something like this? Here's what I know so far. 1. It was dug at a bottle and glass dump site circa 1850 - 1940. The site appears undisturbed at present and long ago abandoned. 2. It is small (I think 7/16" approx.) Although, I'm not sure how to measure it. 3. It is glass, opaque white base, swirls & spots of dark translucent green, a lighter green, Bright ruby red (looks almost gem like in intensity) probably somewhat translucent & a brownish color that may be the green & red mixing. 4. It does have a metallic looking sparkle in the greens and throughout the swirl in the brownish/gold color and greens. 5. It does not appear to be machine made. I can't see any seams or cut marks and the pattern appears to have been deliberately designed to suggest flowers. 6. There is a swirl that winds up and down around the entire marble. It looks like it stops in the same general area that it started. 7. It appears that somebody went to some effort to create this, so what is it? I wish I knew. The more I look at it the more I notice & the cooler it seems to get. 8. The hole goes through the marble but I can't tell if it was made that way or was an after thought. 9. I don't know enough to find the signs of how it was made but hope there are enough pictures here to show the whole marble so maybe you can tell me. I'd love that! 10. Thanks!!!

I'll get to my daughter's and scrutinize the thing....haha

The red dots looked raised in all of the pictures but are not, it's smooth except for the hole. The glass, bottle dump where it was found is abandoned no one goes there now, not sure if anyone did in the past. It looks pretty undisturbed. Some of the glass has been melted from a fire (even a few marbles). I don't know when or how many fires intentional or accidental there were there but something melted a lot of the glass. Tons of stuff is buried up in the roots of trees on the hillside of the ravine/gully where all this stuff is. So far of the things I've seen the earliest we can date is from the 1850's and the newest is from either the late 30's or early 40's. What kind of place do you think it would have been to have all the glass items. There are other things there but mostly tons of bottles and glass stuff.

Also the swirl part of the whatever it is has tiny bits of shiny metallic looking bits through it

I've been wanting to answer after I saw the hat pin pics but my computer's being moved and inaccessible and I'm lousy on my Blackberry. Now I'll go check out hat pins. The hole you can see on the left side of picture #1 goes all the way through the marble. I originally thought that someone had put it there but maybe it was made that way.

The picture are all of the same marble (now I'm thinking maybe 'hat-pin'). I only have one like this. I like the small picture (#1) of the marble better because it is clearer and prettier. I thought the more blown up versions might show more detail. The hat pin pics looked like a possibility, you can see a hole in my marble on the left side of this picture (#1). I recently read on one of the marble sites that they made African Trade marble beads in Germany. Here's are pictures of a couple (#2 & #3) The holes in these are the same as mine and the size seems comparable. What's your thinking here? I also think it looks kinda like these (#4 & #5), but they are bigger marbles (and probably completely different)

Steph suggested I start a new thread for this little marble. It was dug at an old bottle dump circa 1850 - 1930's or 40's. See how small next to quarter. The other marbles in this picture are a couple of the marbles found near this one. They are still dirty in this pic. Any ideas?