shiroaiko

I agree with Mojo anf Ric. Mine measures 25 mm, and it is with a distinct orange peel texture too. Yellow is almost disappearing. This is an English lot it belongs to. I wonder who made these two. The orange peel texture can be felt for them too, although the feel is subtle.

@davesnothere @akroorka We exported glass bottles to the world in the early years. When I was searching for marble-related information, I came across to Osaka Bottle Works (Osaka Seibinsho), a manufacturer and exporter of various kinds of bottles and marbles. It was established in 1907 (Meiji 40), and once monopolized 80% of Japan’s total exports of beverage bottles. Here are some information on them. An advertisement of the bottle company. The circled B is their trademark. "Shina (China) Yearbook, Second Edition" (1917) Edited and Published by: East Asia Common Culture Society, Research and Compilation Division According to "Complete Collection of Japanese Registered Trademarks, Series 7, Volume 1" (1915), the trademark was registered in April 1914. Their bottles had a B embossed on the bottom? I first saw the entry of Osaka Bottle Works in connection with marbles in "Export Product Purchasing Guide, 1919–1920" . "Export Product Purchasing Guide, 1919–1920" Edited by Morio Shinkai Published by Kawase Nisshindō Bookstore November, 1919 (Taishō 😎 The list says the company is "the mfrs. of Glass Bottles and Glass Marbles". The Japanese reads 硝子瓶及瓶玉, or Glass Bottles and Bottle-stopper Marbles. Under the bottle company is the name of Owi Tokujiro. He was the person who left a record of the earliest glass marble export in the country (1915), and I believe his product was toy marbles with a design. His main products were glass bangles for India, mercury beads, fake-pearls and other kinds of glass beads. Other entries which are also available in English; To add something important, the proper name for the books appears to be "The Japan Mercantile & Manufacturers' Directory and Private Residents' List" by A. Cameron & Co. Ltd. I don't understand why we have double names for a book. I also found a factory photograph! It operates a factory covering a site area of approx. 9,900 m² (106,000 sq ft), with buildings occupying 6,600 m² (71,000 sq ft)...employing over 800 workers. . From "General History of the European Great War and Peace Commemoration: With an Appendix on the Glass Industry During the War" (1919) This company was one of the leading pioneers in the bottle manufacturing industry besides Tokunaga. They introduced Siemens-type regenerative furnaces and dramatically increased production efficiency. In one month, it produces 1.5 million bottles for beer and carbonated spring water (including Ramune bottles for export), as well as 25,000 acid-resistant bottles and 250,000 perfume bottles (using crucible furnaces). Later on, Osaka Glass Bottle Works purchased a partial usage right to the Hartford-type furnace from Tokunaga, who held the exclusive rights in Japan. This advance allowed the company to shift from a system in which only raw materials were melted during the night, to a continuous operation where bottles could be produced both day and night. Due to the high quality of its products, the company has gained a strong reputation in markets around the world. As a result, only a small portion of its products are supplied domestically, while the remaining 90% are entirely exported—mainly to destinations such as British India, French India, the South Seas Islands, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Africa, and Great Britain.

Do you try translating the text, word by word? Feel free to ask me for a help. I'm happy to assist. 😃🐈✨

Kitty Cucumber is so adorable! 🥰🫧✨ Do you enjoy the book?

@davesnothere I think we all learn from each other—I'm still learning every day. And I still have lots more to share. I was wondering if you are interested in other patents Naoyuki Seike made. @akroorka I asked my collector friend who has one Tokunaga bottle. It is a rarity. He was happy to send us photos. It's a 1922 bottle. The letter ト/to is the first letter of Tokunaga. I don't know many things about this company, so I cannot explain what N. K. K. stands for. Although Takakichi passed away the next year he made marble stopper bottles, he had 3 sons and they succeeded in the glass business. According to my friend, Tokunaga bottles only have one style. Comparison. The right one reads Codd Bottle Co. All Japanese and vintage. We still use marble-stopper bottles, but the current version comes with a plastic screw cap. That means you can remove the marble without breaking the bottle. The all-glass type is now extinct.

@davesnothere You're welcome. Since slags are made with jst two colors, they cannot be compared to handmades in terms of visual appeal. But I'm always impressed by how perfectly round they are. The makers/machinery had a high level of precision and consistency in their work.

I agree with everyone. The marbles look to be Taiwanese to me too. They tend to have a blank spot at the pole. The soft grayish tones of blue and green are soothing colors. 🫧✨

Have you got screenshots? It seems the listing has been ended. Pictures are not available.

@davesnothere I wonder if the basic principle behind machine-made swirls is the same everywhere? When I think about how swirls are made, I always imagine Aquafresh toothpaste, how the colors come out in a multicolor ribbon. A round-bottom metal cup catches the flow of viscous glass. The cup tilts, and the gathered gob drops onto marble rolls, where it gets rounded.

@akroorka @Ric, thank you so much! I’m really happy to be here and to connect with people who love marbles. Transparent swirls are my favorites too. For Japanese people, traditional toys were either made from clay, wood or paper. But when glass came into the picture (domestic production of glass marbles started from 1892 when Tamakichi Tokunaga started manufacturing marble stopper bottles), we were captivated by its transparency. There’s something magical about being able to see through a material—it's a kind of wonder. We love transparency and translucence so much.

@LevvyPoole, You're welcome. I was lucky to come across the seller, who was kind to share the story. 😃

Thanks for letting me join, @akroorka😃 I identify them as German seam slags. Colors and style match. Something unique to this maker is peachy pink. In 2023 Nov. I came across an eBay listing which identified the slags as Seppenhütte product. Since I never heard of the maker‘s name, I asked the seller if the information came from a reliable source. The response; the seller‘s uncle served as the second boss at the glasswork, and the seller played with the marbles as a child. The machine-rolled Striped Transparents were only a newer product to them. The marbles from Seppen Hütte were almost exclusively handmades using marble scissors before 1945. They were mainly clambroths and banded opaques. The original marble machine was scrapped around 1976.

Another type of prewar marble Naoyuki Seike made was the wirepull. On November 13, 1936, he filed a utility model for a marble-making device that produced machine-made swirls. It was officially published on September 14, 1937, under Utility Model No. 13819 (Shōwa 12). The document can be viewed here: (https://www.j-platpat.inpit.go.jp/c1801/PU/JP-S12-013819/22/ja). The boxes here are Seike's wirepull boxes. The photograph is given to me by Roberto Borromeo, the current owner. The paper label on the box reads 16 Bolitas Japonesas, the source was Argentina. The Bolitas Japonesas box was prepared for the South American market. Swirls are very busy. I saw another Bolitas Japonesas box, and swirls are less busy. Fairylite is a brand of Graham bros. Ltd. a London based company (1887-1970). I learned this first at AAM, a post by slagqueen on Sep 27, 2019. According to her, the company imported marbles from Hong Kong/Far East. "Foreign" is a labeling used during the time of rising Japanese antipathy around WW2. After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War (known in the West in part through incidents like the Manchurian conflict and the Nanjing Massacre), anti-Japanese sentiment grew in the UK and other countries. This led to boycotts of Japanese goods. During this period, Japanese products were often sold under generic labels such as "Foreign" to obscure their origin. This negative sentiment toward Japanese products continued even after World War II. In 1954, the UK enforced stricter regulations requiring country-of-origin labeling on all imports. Until then, Japanese marbles had benefited from Most-Favored-Nation status by being routed through Hong Kong. Not all of them but some greens got dark green bits. All the photos are from Roberto. 🙏 At a glassmakers’ conference held on November 12, 1937, Seike said that the United Kingdom was his largest customer. This was reported in the December 1937 issue of Kagaku to Kōgyō (Science and Industry) magazine. Based on this, it’s likely that prewar wirepulls found in the UK were most likely made by Seike. These are from my collection. The green got dark green bits. It is interesting the white swirls got one big bubble each.

Red ribbons in white base. The white is either opaque or alabaster. Big fat ribbons. Thinner ribbons. Left two got special ribbons. Color on color. Even thinner. Two ribbons join in the far right example. Alabaster is harder than opaque. Red tends to bleed here. Different recipe? Red doesn't bleed.

@Joe2, I also got a Taiwanese feel from your marbles, but I thought Taiwanese marbles usually have a blank spot around the cutline. I was curious if there are any examples where the ribbons meet right at the center. Although they are far from the perfect match, I managed to find several examples. and I found the ones with narrow purple lines are nice. 😃 Not all of them, but the colors have a powder look.

@davesnothere, I think a lot of people end up mixing lots, especially after sorting out certain types of marbles. I also get the urge to classify everything and put one type in each box, which would make my shelf more organized. I love English wisplers and I couldn't resist doing it for them. Once I remove marbles from lots, I forget everything. So I regret and don't do this for other marbles. Early marbles are nice. 😊 I also like them very much.

@davesnothere Do you still have chilly weather in Canada? I took a walk this afternoon to see cherry blossoms in the castle park. They were about half bloom, but the forecast says showers and colder weather will persist for the next few days. I agree that the marbles you selected are beautiful and you can forget about the weather. I had a feel IDing these is very difficult. To get the right answers, I need to see the whole lot/s they belonged to. About the marble you posted earlier, I finally found the picture I wanted to compare. The Instagram post was made by artbillescollection last month. The color and style of the center marble probably matches El Aguila. I think this marble is really nice...they use bright colors including the white alabaster base. Very cheerful.🫧✨ I also get a similar feeling from one of the marbles in your latest photo. I think you’ll spot the one I mean right away.😃

I agree!

@Joe2, @davesnothere, thanks for showing me your marbles!🫧✨ I prepared the yellow patches, matching sets for figure 8s, transitionals, and early cat's eyes. Please have a look! Opaque white tends to spread and bleed on the surface. Figure8s and submerged ribbons. We can see many dark green bits here in these marbles. Opaque white with white bits is used for the pair. Earlier type of cat's eyes? Other colors are dark amber and blue. Tatsukichi Isogami filed two cat's eye patents (utility model rights) between March and May of 1938, so based on the records, he’s considered the “father of cat’s eyes” in Japan. IMO, Seike may have been making cat’s eyes even earlier. His ribbon marbles often got unstable ribbons. When he started making submerged ribbon marbles, he might have realized the great potential of vane-like structures inside the glass. Unlike Isogami, Seike's patch/ribbon type vanes are white. The part that carries color, or where he changes color, is the base glass. The yellow marbles are local finds. They don't glow. No fracture. Left two are not spherical. I think the intensity of yellow reflects thickness of yellow. The yellow is very soft. @Joe2, do you find them similar to yours? Smaller marbles are 13 mm. Bigger ones are 17 mm. Other Seike patches with yellow. 17 and 15 mm. I almost forget about this. The yellow is really soft and spreads on alabaster. The ribbon looks affected by the underlying purple. This lot is from the UK. I hope these photos help convey the kind of yellow Seike made and used for alabaster patches.

I'm sorry I mistook your message! The last entry of Seike's business was the 1959 Census. According to Reiko, he passed away in 1963.

@davesnothere Thank you for the detailed photos! I'm familiar with them. They are Seike's!

Ooh, you are kind! ❤️Thank you, but the mushroom has come to you and it is yours. I hope I can find some more in the future. 🫧✨

Hi Ric, I'm afraid that I can say nothing about the Shackman boxes with Japanese marbles...🙏 Why were the wirepulls not made in West Germany when the label says so?

Hi @davesnothere and @Ric, IDing marbles is more difficult without their historical background. My Seike marbles are either from Japan or the UK. I don't know the situation in Canada or in the US, so I'm interested in other's collection. The source is important. Talking about toy marbles in Japan, due to our weak currency, we didn’t buy marbles from Western countries. We supplied marbles by ourselves, so prewar marble lots in Japan basically don’t contain foreign-made pieces. If certain types of marbles are found in both UK (the largest customer of Seike) and Japan, they are highly likely Seike's because he was the dominant exporter among the Japanese marble makers. Isogami and Yasuda made a joint company to reach the countries outside Yen-bloc economy, but it was short-lived due to the war. Ric, your Vitro patches are bold in colors. The patches on those marbles use opaques, and the layers are thin. I see this as advanced production techniques also focused on economy. By contrast, Seike’s prewar marbles often have much thicker color layers. The thickness wasn’t tightly controlled, so they weren’t economical at all. Also, Seike tended to use transparent or semi-transparent colors for these patch marbles. For these reasons, the marbles you showed don't have much of Seike feel to me. To my eyes, Dave's mystery two-color patch got a close color combination to the Vitros. Yet I wonder how translucent or how thick for the mystery marble. I do not own these Vitro patches myself. Please forgive me if my way of seeing is out of focus. I think the smaller group has some of these. Mines are sourced from Germany. For the cat's eye group, I see Seikes, but if I could see bigger images, I can say this with confidence.

@davesnothere you also got dark amber mushroom!❤️