Alan

The next type I'll present is an opaque white base wih a small amount of clear) with transparent green "snake" swirls on the surface. The green in this type is usually accompanied by Ravenswood's version of oxblood in a fine thread - usually defining the margins or the center of the transparent green swirl. One of the beter "common" Ravenswood swirls. A variation on the above type is an opaque white base with a single color brown swirl in light or medium tone. http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/Eyesofsilver/Marbles/Ravenswood/IMG_6168.jpg Another opaque white base type has blue or blue-gray swirls: http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/Eyesofsilver/Marbles/Ravenswood/IMG_6169.jpg Another opaque white base type has transparent light green or transparent aqua surface swirls. These color swirls have some limited depth into the marble. http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/Eyesofsilver/Marbles/Ravenswood/IMG_6171.jpg Another opaque white base type has busy transparent orange swirls - often with good depth into the white matrix. These orange swirls sometimes form near-flame patterns. The transparent orange may (rarely) be the predominant color of the marble (instead of the white base). http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/Eyesofsilver/Marbles/Ravenswood/IMG_6173.jpg http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/Eyesofsilver/Marbles/Ravenswood/IMG_6174.jpg Moving to transparent base glass Ravenswoods - the next type has a transparent emerald green base with jumbled white swirls throughout. The green can shift towards aqua in a few examples. http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/Eyesofsilver/Marbles/Ravenswood/IMG_6175.jpg Side view - with some backlighting: http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/Eyesofsilver/Marbles/Ravenswood/IMG_6176.jpg End Part III

Also in the premium classification group are gray swirls. These tend to be multiple shades of gray with a white switl and perhps 10-16% clear. The result is fine detail lines throughout this type - fairly busy pattern. They tend to average 19/32" up to 5/8"... but usually closer to 19/32". In my experience these are much harder to find than the brown-based swirls and seem to exist in very limited quantities. The next premium type is an opaque white based swirl with a bright blue and trnsparent honey-amber swirl. The white base is a pure, brilliant white - not the creamy off-white we tend to see in other WV swirls. One diagnostic for this type is that the honey-amber swirl color has good transparency and depth into the white matrix. Noice the detail lines in he blue... almost like elevation contour lines on a topgraphic map. This type is fairly hard to find - like the grays above. (Note: 15+ years ago some dealers sold these as Christensens) The next premium type is a Ravenswood version of a Coral. Opaque green base with black and coral swirls on the surface. They usually have good detail lines in the green and nice shading in the coral. Hard to find. The next premium type is a clear matrix with bright blue and white swirls in almost a jumbled wirepull pattern. The clear is VERY clear glass and the blue is an icy blue. The average size is 9/16-19/32". A very bright an attracive marble. I have seen very few of these and own only 4. The last premium type I'll be describing is a marble that didn't jump out at me when I fist saw it. It is a very dark cobalt blue marble that appears almost opaque. When backlit - an internal pattern of cobalt clue in a clear matrix is seen in the same style as smoke rises in the air. Hard to find - I have only even seen 7 of them. Very hard to photograph decently. This concludes premium types that I will cover in this writing - although there are a few more that exist. The next type is an opaque light green/blue base with a transparent bright blue surface swirl. The blue swirl tends to spread on the surface like a transparent veneer - but aslo has some depth into the marble depending on how the swirl was laid onto the marble. Although classified as a common type - I have found them in limited quantities and find the color combination to be attractive. I have one variation on the Coral described above that has the same opaque light green base as the Coral, but has only one color swirl - a black/dark gray veneer at the surface with no/little transparency. I own only one example of this color combination. End Part II

A fellow Board member saw a photo of one storage case of Ravenwoods of mine and asked me to post a photo review of Ravenswood marble types in my collection. There seems to be a shortage of good classification resources available with clear photos - so I thought I would "pay it forward" for the good advice I received years ago from David Chamberlain (who got me started collecting Ravenswood and whom I hold largely responsible for my Ravenwood habit/expenitures! ). Some background: Many years ago I attended the Seattle club show and met David Chamberlain. I knew nothing about Ravenswood and ultimately purchased one of his Ravenswood Identification assortments (which came with a slip of paper with a Ravenswood overview). Shortly thereafter I attended the Columbus, OH show and met a dealer who had purchased a considerable quality of Ravenwoods from the ~1987 find of crated marbles. He had been through the large quantity he had purchased and had separated the premium varieties from the more common swirls and was selling both for reasonable asking prices. I began cherry picking from the roughly 2-3,000 pieces he brought to each show and over time amassed a fair quantity. With a single exception, my buying of Ravenwood was limited to these two sources - both of which traced back directly to the 1987 crates find (the exception was a very nice group of 20 mint brown-based cobalt blue Ravenwoods that I happened upon in Amana - uniquely Ravenswood due to their color). The Ravenswoods in my collection are limited to those varieties that were in the 1987 crate find. While they have provenance - they do not represent the full Ravenwood line during their production years. Therefore the photos below do not represent all Ravenswood varieties. I generally divide Ravenwoods into premium and average swirls types. The premium types can be pretty hard to find (some of them extremely hard to find). Ravenswood used colors and in some cases patterns that are unique to Ravenswood marbles. In some cases you need to study the marble for a bit to pick-up the details to differentiate Ravenswood from Champion - or any number of other West Virginia marbles. When the base color is opaque - Ravenswood often used a very transparent swirl color to "snake" across the surface. This line of transparent color commonly dives down into the marble proving some color depth. This is often a good Ravenswood diagnostic when used with other ID methods. The premium types: There are several Ravenswood varities that are quite striking and fairly under-represented compared to the total Ravenswood output. One of the most recognized are the brown-based swirls. To the best of my knowledge Ravenswood was the only marble company that produced a swirl where the predominant color as brown (with a transparent cobalt blue or emerald green swirl). This gives the marble (IMO) an understated and striking beauty. In my experience the brown-based cobalt swirls with cobalt blue are somewhat harder to find than the emerald green - although both are uncommon to find. Brown-Based Cobalt Blue swirls: Brown-Based Emerald Green swirls: I have a number of brown-based Ravenswoods where the brown is noticeably lighter - sort of a cafe-Au-lait tone and the transparent swirl color sometimes lighter as well. I attribute this to variability in the production run - not a different variety. The appearance is different though and could cause some uncertainty - so here is a photo to illustrate it. Notice the swirl color differences an each side of the fold: I have a single example of a brown base with a black swirl. The black does not show much transparency - unlike the blues and greens. End Part I

None. The two glasses have different densities and clearly the oxblood moves to the surface - which IMO suggest a higher density. I think the internal limited oxblood is pretty common with the exception of some of the clear oxblood "experimentals" that were dug at the factory. Those exhibit a good internal mix of oxblood - which make them fairly dark.

It seems that the subject of oxblood and how it covers, swirls or mixes with a marble's base glass comes up in threads with some regularity. I came across a batch of Akro milky oxbloods I acquired many years ago. In the group was a "throw away" that got tossed in - with a heavy fracture through it. I popped it in half by hand and the resulting photos of the outside versus the inside speaks volumes about oxblood density and how it tends to move and spread to the surface. I thought I would share this since most of us won't encounter broken oxblood marbles. The outside: and the inside...

My favorites are in a display case - so here are some from my storage cases: Florescents:

They do a clear gather and create the first sphere - about 2". It is then annealed and cooled to room temperature. They then use glass paints to make the inner sphere artwork - placing art in specific places. I *think* they then fire the glass paint to the first sphere. Once fired they then put it in a kiln and slowly bring it back up to temperature, punty it up and do a clear gather over the first sphere - enough to give the 1st and 2nd layers depth. It then gets knocked off the punty again, back into annealing and brought back down to room temperature slowly. The second layer of art is applied with "windows" in the apropriate places to see the art in the first gather. They fire the second layer of paint as before, ramp it back up in the kiln, punty it and then do a final clear gather over the 2nd layer of art. As you can see - there is a lot of work in them. They did a collaboration with Josh Simpson with head figures with open mouths with Simpson planets inside. Clear stars on the top of the head lit he planet. Pretty cool. From their website: They are far more interesting in the hand than in photos.

I thought that I would share a Harry and Wendy Bessett collaboration with Ken Leslie. It is a large, two-stage piece, hand painted. Enjoy!

I once saw a really nice MK Watrmelon with a small screw in it.

Looks like oven brick and a little soot. They were probably at the bottom of the pot.

Scoop: I discovered this when looking for a specific Simpson Planet. Since you said you prefer the pink - here is one: and Matthews Rectangles in Pink (didmyium?) glass.

Yes it is - it is a Blue New Mexico!

Anyone else collect Josh Simpson Planets? If so - post some pics!

From the photos - it is an "Ade" base - not the wispy white with clear one would find in a Popeye.

The colors in glass are imparted by glass colorants. Here are a few and their respective colors via glassalchemyarts:

Abundant and cheap silica and natural gas deposits. Just the raw materials needed to make marbles.

Correct - second link is the right one. Your bank account may be the poorer for it though!

Dollars to donuts I know the person described in the post as "Tim". He is no stranger to Akro digs. If there IS digging going on - expect wholesale lots to come available soon. It would be nice if some of these new digs could be documented as the material is found and removed. There is something to be learned (or lost) in most digs of this type.

A fair and interesting question. The conventional response has always been that "the spinner cup wasn't spinning". IMO (and I have no way to prove this concept) it would seem possible to me that the spinner cup failed to "catch" the glass streams and get them turning into the classic corkscrew pattern. Given that the spinner cup was made of graphite - it seems POSSIBLE that the spinner cup was turning and the glass entered the cup but rounded-up without turning the streams. On my Akro spinner cups there are hand-carved vertical ridges within the cup. They are relatively roughly done and I guessed that these were done by the operator. The purpose of the ridges appears to be to "catch" the color streams and get them turning to make a corkscrew. If the ridges were worn than it would seem logical that the corkscrew pattern would be weak or absent. In the last major dig at the Akro site a huge number of Popeye patches (blue) were found dumped. It is a matter of guesswork why such a large number would have been produced without noticing the problem/cause. They were all the same colors - thus probably off the same run/machine. They did not appear as nice as the photo in this thread.

Probably close to 40,000 marbles have come out of the Akro site on two different occasions before without the world coming to an end. Of anything dug - less than 5% are usually of a type and condition to merit strong collector interest. That leaves a lot of ballast that diggers will try to sell. I have seen full footlockers of Akro Supermen that the seller couldn't unload. The Ebay lot prose smacks of bitterness, backstabbing jealousy and blackmail. IMO it doesn not speak well of its author - whoever that is.

Scoop: Here is the Matthews Super Jetson:

I'll photo one of mine and put it in the Vaseline glass thread for you.

It goes to show - never write from memory! I pulled the Matthews pieces I got at Wheaton this year - an lo and behold - the Comedy and Tragedy is in vaseline glass (somehow clear stuck in my mind). I ALSO remembered (duh...) that I purchased a large Stars Air Trap in vaseline glass. Anyway - here is Comedy and Tragedy: Stars:

Thatks for the Mark link - I have not been aware of his work. Are the Muurray protos yours? I have two Man in the Moons - one with sunglasses. I'd LOVE to have the Monkeyman piece - very nice! I watched Bill make Man in the Moon piece at his Wheaton Village demo ~3-4 years ago. His mold technique was interesting. I hope he decides/is able to make marbles again. Thanks, Alan