Alan

Thank you for posting. Mike was kind enough to send me a few from a contest he ran once. They are all of the smaller size. I have always admired his creative thought that imagined them. Alan

Looks like new-ish glass.

Not oxblood.

Need a still photo, no UV. UV doesn't mean anything.

Keep in mind that when a machine made ingot is cut, the cut is not always a clean one. That is because shear dull over usage. A small string of glass can and will stretch a bit from the rollers until it parts. That is where "drizzle" comes from. Its a manufacturing defect. When the hot ingot hit the rollers trailing that string of glass, it starts spinning immediately. After all, that is what the rollers are for. That "string" can immediately form a loop. That loop can be mistaken for a "9". These days - it often is. People go looking for a "9", a "pontil", "aventurine" etc. Looking enough - they will "find" them. Its important to look at the whole marble. Look at the glass and the glass motion. Glass transparency and opacity. Also, its helpful to know how cane-cut marbles are made. And how terms that are commonly used (like "pontil") are actually misused and misunderstood. >99% of all marbles that people refer to a "pontil" never had a punty attached to it. Understanding the process helps accurately identify marbles.

Not. Don't look for them and they won't deceive you.

Is the first one polished?

Well said. Not an auger for me.

Also - two glass marbles create a sharp sound unique to glass. Two acrylics tapped together make a different, duller sound.

Are these acrylic?

It is a small gather from the furnace on the end of a punty, shaped, figure pressed, "gather boy" brings a roughly equal gather to complete the piece. Then the punty is taken to the same seat that cane cut pieces are worked on, trimmed and rounded, then necked-down from the gather.

Sulphides were a modified cane-based technique based on a singe gather of clear formed into a (roughly) half-sphere. The kaolin clay figure was pressed into the hot gather, more clear added to form the basis of a (rough) sphere, then the whole mass was trimmed and rounded to form a sphere. It would have been made in the same studio as cane-cut handmades.

I'll start by noting that paperweight technique (aka "lampworking") goes back several centuries when beadmaking started. Complex paperweight worked started (IIRC) around 1880 using gas and a mouth blowpipe to increase heat. Paperweights appeared in the mid-1800s in Venice, and later in France. Complex designs with very fine craftsmanship appeared in the late 1880s IIRC. The techniques progressed and some studios turned out incredibly finely detailed work with relatively simple torches. Paperweight were originally simple glass half-spheres meant to hold down papers in rooms with windows open. These evolved into decorative art for the home. Their form could be half-spheres, spheres with flattened bottoms (cold work), animals (I owned a Hedgehog) etc. Almost any three dimensional that could be imagined could be made - depending on the skill of the artist and the time that had to make it. Today there are artists like Paul Stankard that create work that is so detailed that its is quite a sight to behold in person. Even photos of his work are striking:

The only way to make a glass piece with that detail is a torch paperweight technique. All cane attachment points can be cold-worked (polished) away. Cane-cut marbles are an entirely different method than paperweight technique.

Its a machine made.

Baller box!

The reaction appears to be blue.

x4

I have a few - and I'm interested.

Maybe its because the pics are out-of-focus and the coloration seems odd, but I'm not 100% sure that its Akro.

Its in pretty good shape. I recommend against any treatment.

At one time, Bill Cokenhauer had two for sale at Ohio and other shows. I think they sold after quite a while and later Bill had a third one. IMO they are far more paperweights than they are marbles. Kids marbles aren't made in such large sizes. The technique is also paperweight.

X3 Rebel

What color does the ribbon appear to be in-person?