Steph

Peltier 1944 - Daniel William Lawrence, Pres. of L. U. No. 61 of the American Flint Glass Workers' Union (source)

One more topic I wish I'd started awhile back. I read something recently about someone thinking Akro hadn't employed a glass chemist. That triggered a memory of some of the marble factory job titles I saw in censuses from the 20's and 30's. I can't remember if glass chemist was one at Akro. It seemed as if it might have been but the memory isn't coming into focus yet and I don't see it right now in my notes. I don't think I even kept notes of all of the employee names I've found. But I will start a list now and try to keep it up. Random info someone might find a use for someday.

In 1957 a movie was made of the VFW national tourney in Seattle. It was shown at VFW meetings. In 1951, Sellers Peltier was one of five "small town personalities" showcased on a Chicago television show. The WGN film crew had taken "movies" at the Peltier factory. Parts were dubbed into the program. Do those films still exist?

Woohoo!

Didja know kids back in the day used lard to restore their mibs? Soak your alley taws in lard and the moons disappear. Read one account where lard was used as a preventative measure also. Soak your new taw overnight and supposedly it's less likely to be damaged in the game the next day.

Well, for me there wasn't much doubt that Don's trophy had to be from 1940 or later. That flyer from 1940 already seemed to put an earliest date of 1939 on the trophy with the crouching boy. (Perhaps only as late as 1941 though.) And here is a photo of Berry Pink presenting an ordinary loving cup trophy to a winner in Brooklyn in 1939. (click to enlarge) So, I think we're zero-ing in on a time frame for Don's trophy. His trophy was more burnished and smaller than the ones we've seen pictured from 1940, so it was easy to guess it was older. But I suspect 1941 now. The 1941 tournaments didn't have the same fanfare as 1940. I'm guessing Pink went smaller that year. And I haven't found any evidence of a Berry Pink Marble King tournament after that. At least nothing from 1942 to whenever Marble King became linked with the New Jersey tournaments.

LOL ... I wrote to ask the LA Times Reprint people about whether the 1924 article would be under copyright. And if so, how to get permission to share it with people interested in the history of toy marbles. And the response was the exact table from that page I linked to above. I still don't know if the article can be used. This is the beginning of the article I'd like to share. I tried to summarize it before, but I'd so much rather show the whole thing. Perhaps this much would be "safe" by fair use, no? To be continued? Something which will definitely be continued soon is the story of the California Agate Co., which at some point came to be the California Onyx Co. Here is a teaser: (click to enlarge) Photo courtesy of Doug Mitchell, grandson and namesake of G. D. Mitchell

I was sent these pix for this thread. The mibs are on their way too. :-) The header sure looks old. I'll fantasize that they are 50's Hong Kong until I hear further information. We're curious about what WL might mean. Any ideas? (click to enlarge) um, here's a list of commonwealth countries to get an idea of where the "empire" has been. I hoped that would give me a lead on "WL" but if it's there I missed it.

This is a good summary of things I've read before about when copyrights expire. http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm There is an article published in 1924 which I would like to post. The newspaper in which it is published has a pretty strict policy about copyrights and about obtaining permission to use its articles. I believe that copyright protects the PDF format of the article online. But would the actual text now be in the public domain? I need to sort that out, hmmm?

I moiderize time online. This was one of James Harvey Leighton's enterprises, extremely short-lived if I am not mistaken, like about 2 months from opening to filing for receivership (???). It got quite a deal of press actually, some political -- coz patriotic boys could buy american-made! After this he helped Martin Christensen get set up. And after that he opened a factory in Barberton. (more about JHL -- looks like he fit in one more company between 1900 and 1902)

The name of Bill's image is PurpleYellowBlueGermanFlame.jpg

I have some red cage style cats with black accents which do a passable impression of oxblood.

1916 Most of an ad for B. Illfelder & Company, "sole agents for Christensen's Onyx Marbles". What would we call MFC's now if the Christensen Agate Co hadn't co-opted the name? (click to enlarge)

If you click on your name on the left side of the page, you should get an option to "find member's posts". That'll get you to 'em. :-)

I agree with both of you guys, Bo and Alan. I don't want to define oxblood out of meaning. I totally want to stick with the "fairly well acknowledged" use of the word. That's why I stood my ground in that heck-acious thread the other day. Mostly "everyone" knows what marble collector's oxblood is. There are other traditional uses of the term but for marble collecting when newbies are asking what oxblood is, they're trying to learn to identify Akro's version. But there are still people who use the word in other contexts, and as long as care is taken to make the context clear, I have no problem with that. Few people seem to want to say "Vitro oxblood" is "real" oxblood. But some people do still say "Vitro oxblood" and it is not my desire to say they are wrong. I just sit with the other newbies to middle-bies in the pews hoping to learn what they mean by that. p.s. As far as the purple oxblood, in marble terms it's less of an expansion than saying that certain brick reds are oxblood. That Jabo glass is chemically kin to Akro's version. But the whole galdarned mess can be sidestepped if people will use adjectives well and leave the unadorned name "oxblood" for the accepted standard as seen in Akro and MFC. p.p.s. I think taking the non-expansionist route might rule out the heroes. Aren't they an Akro red, but not what the 95% call oxblood? I'm not sure, not seeing that red in hand, but I don't remember hearing of oxblood thrashers before.

Yup. That could include some non-akro versions of 'oxblood'. It would be cool to see them without arguing about "why is that less oxblood than akro's version". By using "non-haematinum", I hoped to step around that argument. Hoped that anyone reading this site recently would also have read Brian Graham's page here, Melting Oxblood or Haematinum red glass, and thus would know what I meant. Quick note re: hematin. Haematinum red is different from that. The active metal is copper not iron. There are other terms which could have been used, such as haematinone. But yup, that's what I meant -- "not oxblood but kinda sorta close".

I mentioned House of Marbles when you asked about Asian corkscrews. My answer was an "if I'm thinking of the right marble" reply. This is the marble I was thinking of. Pic from Land of Marbles: The marbles dug in Shanghai are a mystery. I posted about them awhile back. They were bought by an American antique seller who goes to Shanghai periodically and buys them from a digger. Here is the first set I posted. P.s., they are in better shape than they look -- the scanner gave them a glare. None of the slags here has a ground pontil. One of the white ones MIGHT but it's unclear. It looks altered somehow but half-heartedly. And these have the reverse 9's, so I'm not putting the purple one with them, even though there are some similarities in the pontil. The typical Japanese transitionals are this type. Japan was exporting marbles in the 30's and there's reason to suppose these were among the type they were exporting then. They have spidery "pontils". From Marblealan auctions: (click images to enlarge)

Agreed, oxblood is a shade of red. Blood is red! !! what else?!!!! lololol However, I cannot resist the usual disclaimer: If qualifiers are used judiciously (or implicitly understood), I'm not going to argue when someone uses the name "oxblood" for non-standard examples. I believe the purple here in Windy's photo is derived from aventurine, in the same way as red oxblood. So I will not argue when it is called "purple oxblood". Why is it purple? I don't know. Does it have a blue "contaminant" blending with the copper based glass? Or is it some "ionic" thing? Or what? Whatever the cause, I'm not going to argue with the description "purple oxblood" when Edna uses it to describe the family. (Is this a Hardcore?)

Here are a couple of provocative examples of mine which once upon a time I wished were ox. Now I just want the 2nd one to be understood because it's WEERD! The first is 13/16". click for larger images. The 2nd is 5/8". In both cases, at least some of the red seems opaque at least some of the time but it is transparent or translucent and in some views looks very plain. The 2nd case is especially weird. The red is like a gel. A glistening gel which is hovering in the matrix. How it appears seems to depend on how the light hits it. What are your favorite non-standard (non-opaque and/or non-Haematinum) ox-ish reds in the generally brick-like range?

Almost hate to post a nickel marble after those, but .... well anyway I was looking for a different oddball when I ran across this one, my single seam bumblebee:

No, I haven't learned more about the type of dump it was. Obviously more evidence is needed all around. The Shanghai lead might turn out to be a deadend, but it's a lead nevertheless and shouldn't be dismissed without cause. The similarities between the marbles in the Shanghai group, as a group, are compelling to me, and how that mysterious line pontil type fits into the continuum of pontils in the Shanghai group is intriguing. I say "mysterious" about the pontil, because as of the time of the writing of the pontil page at the Akronmarbles site, it was still a mystery and I'm not aware that the mystery has yet been solved. Also worth noting is how the color on the example of the one at the Akronmarbles page fits Chinese colors. The reverse 9's are pretty interesting too. (which of course my purple one doesn't exhibit, darn it)

Jabo sure made some nice lavender. These are the glowing sort: Is this from Fenton cullet? The first marbles I bought for myself were Jabos and heavy in lavender. Might have been the same run as your box, Bill, which Winlock is selling. I remember all those colors represented, plus a cool caramel-looking mib, and I think maybe a red, white, blue and brown. mabye. ?

It's not for sale. It is only a fragment of a marble in any case. It was excavated by archaelogists. The paper to which I linked is a scholarly work published by the Canterbury Archaelogical Trust. It was part of their annual report 10 years ago. Title and author -- Losing your marbles: Post-medieval gaming marbles of pottery and stone from Canterbury excavations, by John Cotter There does not appear to have been any untoward agenda in proving anything about the marbles. Sometimes marbles are used to help date archaelogical sites. In this case, the author seemed to be going in more of the reverse direction, and was trying to learn more about the marbles in their own right. At this point in time in England apparently there was some thought that the marbles had been made in England and the author is making a case for them being imported. The opening paragraphs of the article: I take the "well-stratified" qualifier to indicate that these marbles were from old levels of the site, identified levels, and not tossed willy nilly into the area in the way Jabos were tossed into the Jackson site. Sue, I wouldn't have made the connection between the Pennsylvania Dutch and this one, but now that you mention it, the semicircles at the equator do look very much alike.

Here are a couple of items I've already posted elsewhere. They belong in this thread too. This is a great article from Pic magazine. July 1939. At this point Pink apparently still considers the Scripps-Howard tournament to be the national tournament. That's the one he donates a college scholarship to. He has already involved with local tournaments then but I do not think they were named after him yet. (click to enlarge) . . . . In 1941 a newspaper announcement for Pink's tournament mentions Ruth Lapham, the cutie from the last photo, in order to encourage girls to enter. But according to a Coronet magazine piece in 1946, Pink "goes white" at the thought of girls playing. Marbles had survived for ages, but a girl winning the national title might bring it all down, he says. I'll leave you to analyze the rest of the article ... or just enjoy it. And here is a1940 flyer published in connection with the Marble King tournament at the World's Fair, discussing his past tournament involvement, the design of the trophy handed out in 1940, and tying everything to 1941 sales. (click to enlarge) Large print version of the page 3 (684 kb) I first posted that flyer in Dinkybus' thread about his Marble King trophy. That is the thread which got me hooked on this stuff: Marble King Trophy, Berry Pink Tournament Item