Alan

The funny thing about contemporaries is that they are very diverse and one person's "got to have it" is another person's <yawn>. IMO many contemps can be trickier to photograph - as many have a lot of depth to them. I started collecting contemporaries after about a decade a collecting vintage (in addition to, not instead of). I found that moreso than vintage - it helps to actually to actually hold it in the hand to really appreciate the skill that went into making it. The diversity of design and execution is so broad as to almost defy description and artists are constantly coming up with radical new design concepts. Some contemporaries require huge investments in time to prepare, craft and finish them. Ask a contemporary artist how much time goes into a specific piece and you will often be amazed. Like vintage it is a "buy what you like" emphasis.

Just to add that the Wheaton Village/Arts show is possibly the best show for contemporaries.

Glass addiction is a good place to start. There are a huge number of artists not on GA though. It sort of depends whose work you prefer and want to collect. A good number of contemporary artists sell on Ebay as well. Personal preference in contemporaries vary widely - as do costs.

That would be MOST interesting.

That would be interesting if it proves to be accurate. As far as I know - the site was declared a hazardous waste site about 10 years ago due to the toxic material residues found there. The city had tried to sell the site previously but the sale was contingent upon acceptance of the cost for the HAZMAT clean-up - which at the time was estimated to be in excess of $1,000,000.

To orient everyone - the star-shaped cuts in the graphite cup were made to "catch" the streams of glass and help it to start spinng in the same direction as the cup. Otherwise the "cork" pattern would not exist. IIRC - my cups have deeper ridges. These were hand carved by the factory workers.

I haven't been out there in a few years and yes, the Clarksburg Police have it on their patrol route (city owned property now). IMO there isn't any reason to go poking around - the entire area has been picked over so much. It is said that there is an offsite location that Akro dumped a large amount of material - but for reasons I won't go into it is not physically accessible. One of my favorite Akros was found across the street under the big ball field bleachers. Who knows - the ball field may be a dump site? Ditto for a small business just down the street. The back hill probably has some small finds left - but the police presence and stealth makes it not worth the trouble. A LOT of material was taken out of the site over the years and represents an interesting cross-section of production pieces, a few TRUE experimentals, lots of end/beginning-of-run discards, cullet and other misc items.

Sharing some of that experience.... here are a few photos of the Akro Agate site several years ago: For a little orientation - the concrete slab was the factory floor. It was roughly 1+ acres in size and had a rail line at one end. The small building was the administrative office. The tower held silica and if you look at it closely - you'll see the original (tin) roofline diagonal line. The poor condition of the slab is from diggers smashing their way through looking for discarded marbles - which were found in some quantity in a drain system. Cullet, discarded marbles and broken glassware was discarded in enormous quantity on adjacent property. The entire site has been heavily dug, sifted and combed-through for quite a number of years.

Keep in mind that the number of colors in a specific marble does not have to be limited by the number of nozzles. When they changed colors they did not stop the machine and certainly didn't change the color tanks. I have several Akro machine parts and I can tell you that it is obvious that a lot of different runs were made one right after the other. Funnels etc looked like the 7 cities of Troy - with colors runs layered one on top of the other. If a piece was produced as one run was ending and another was starting - all kinds of wierd colors are possible. This is also obvious to those who have frequented the Akro plant digs. A LOT of marbles that were not the exact color that they wanted, blends and start/end of runs were discarded by the bucket. I believe that many of these pieces with more colors than usual just missed the trash bucket. Not saying they aren't attractive - its just not what the factory intended to produce.

Another small group

I took a quick photo to show some of the colors. White and brown are fairly common. Blues probably next, then reds. As noted above - aqua and vaseline (florescent yellow) are harder to find. Peach are very hard to find.

I had two, 1" Akro oxbloods in my collection for a number of years. The big ones with Sky Blue, clear matrix and often bright yellow under the oxblood. I used to handle a lot of Akro coming out of the Akro plant site digs 8+ years ago and these were from that material. I think a similar one was involved in the auction fracas early this year - they look like: Did you ever get that odd feeling like you had more of a marble type.... not certain but that little nagging feeling? I have a considerable store of material that I literally haven't looked into in 7 or more years... salted away in a security cabinet. Just a stack of cases that haven't seen daylight in almost a decade. So last night I decide to open that dusty crypt (sound of creaking door slowly opening and of flapping bat wings......) and look at one of 14-15 cases inside. Its interesting what you can forget that you own.... Now I recall a buying transaction of some phenomenal oxbloods (including some flourescent transparent oxbloods). These were among them. I've never seen them as a Akro production piece at this size and surmise that they were a test run that was discarded for whatever reason. Most have a bright yellow reverse behind the oxblood - most having a generous amount of light Powder Blue with the clear matrix. In some cases (a minority of my 15) the yellow surfaces and has some very nice detail lines in the yellow. I'm interested in a rough population count of these in the ~1" size. If anyone has any thoughts in that regard - I'd enjoy hearing from you in the thread or privately. Thanks, Alan

None of the shooters look right

With surface scratches no less. Whatever the bidders were thinking - I'll never know.

What aspect of it is "experimental"?

Its an Akro corkscrew with a couple of extra turns.

The same was true with the Sky Blue Onyx pieces that I saw dug - 90+% of them had annealing fractures from incompatible glass. BTW - here is one of my two:

Its been 10+ years since those digs turned them up. I'm not aware of them ever making it to production.. The colors are a bit too muted to make them attractive to kids.

Thats what it is. The diggers didn't uncover very many of these - and probably less than half are mint/near mint. Back when they first surfaced they sold for fairly strong prices. They are beautiful, subtle pieces.

Charles: This wouldn't happen to be a little larger than 1" - would it?

Its a fairly nice Stained Glass box. I saw the lot and dismissed the 1960s notation. Its a good box.

Well... it took a number of years to get them all! My target was 50. About half of them were purchased from Roger Hardy. Roger said that the total population (he owned all known examples back in the day) was about 200.

The 1"+ Akro Experimental patches are among my favorites.