shiroaiko

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!❤️

@davesnothere Thank you for taking so many photos! I looked at them closely, and most of them gave me a Seike impression. I don’t mean I’ve seen all of them before, but I understand why you identify them as Seikes. The ribbon marbles in these 4 pictures are siblings. We see bleeding ribbons in opaque white, while a couple of greens on the right got alabaster stripes. I also see white bits in the ribbons, and dark green bits in transparent green. They are Seike traits. The bicolor matrix for sky blue marbles can be on purpose, because I see bicolor examples for ribbon marbles from time to time. The marbles below are submerged ribbon marbles which sometimes look like pseudo-cat's eyes. Although I haven't seen these before, traits like two patches and the mixing of colors tell me they are highly likely to be Seike's. Wispy marbles are fun when they are viewed from various angles. How I wish if I could rotate them on my palm. 🫧✨ Do you think veneer type marbles are post war production? The marbles below are a local find. In my country there is one big collector of old Japanese glassware who is also interested in marbles. Many old marbles go straight to him because antique dealers help to build his collection. In recent years he started to supply (small?) numbers of glass toys to the antique market. These marbles are from his previous collection, bought from a shop in Tokyo. The green patch on the left is nice! I like it a lot! I am happy to see mushrooms! 😃 I wonder if I can identify the two color patch (the far right) as Seike, if it is mixed with patch marbles from other makers. I still cannot figure out the dark color... is it purple or black?...I thought I had purple and black examples somewhere and I found purple and brown. I think brown is rare. The multicolor ribbons got interesting color combinations! Do they belong to the same lot? Interesting that the rare color mushroom has a hint of another color on the yellow. I thought the color combination of yours matches the one of my Insta friend, but yours got darker green. Is there a faint line/tint on the yellow for both? You have a three color patch... mines are somewhat bolder. Possibly postwar production. The orange is especially intense in the middle marble. Is it a transparent color? The 3 color patch is very nice! 🥰 Orange transitionals must be pretty rare… I only have one, and even that one is ambiguous. I always wonder whether it’s a transitional or a swirl. At the moment, I’m thinking it’s more of a swirl, since I can't find a pontil. Seike's transitionals got a crease pontil. @Joe2 kindly offered me to purchase the puzzle box last year. Later I found another set which houses Japanese bisque dolls at Etsy (already sold out). The dolls were originally owned by an elderly English lady.

I also took other photos this morning. They are patch/ribbon types in variations. The right two are clear-base marbles. (Please just ignore the orange marble on the far right. ) 4 with clear part. 1 without clear. Marbles with 3 ribbons. In one example one of the stripes goes under the white.

@davesnothere please post your pictures here! I am happy people come and join the thread! This afternoon I came across to an interesting Instagram post. 😃 @eyes_of_stone_beachcombing has a handful of beachcombing finds on her palm. The white-base purple patch on her thumb appears to the same Seike type I just prepared for posting today. I hadn't seen purple ones. This kind of coincidence makes me excited. Below are the two examples I took photos of in the morning. The idea is the same as beige/orange tint marbles. A color on a color. It's also fun to see how different the two types of red behave on white glass. The semi-opaque red tends to spread and bleed on the surface, while the opaque red settles in just right—indicating that the red and white have closer melting points.

@davesnothere The story of painted marbles is first for me too. I'm interested in your marbles, and I look forward to reading your thread. 😃 You are right that Seike made figure 8s. Early ones use a color combination same as transitionals. I think when he started experiments on white ribbons, they were in alabaster white and the number of stripes was 3. The glass was harder than the transparent base glass, resulting in a strange look. I personally call them 小 (pronounces like "show") marbles. The Chinese character means small. Later he switched the alabaster white to opaque white, which had a lower melting temperature than the base glass. The opaque white spreads well on the surface. Although the color blotches on the surface, the marbles look better than the previous version with alabaster white. Something interesting is Seike mixed white powder with opaque white. This was done probably on purpose.

This is a page from my marble book which features an original package of mushroom marbles. It doesn't provide the maker's name, just saying "made in Japan", but from the glass and configuration of the marbles, I identify them as Seike's. The dark amber is the only one that I own for this type. It has a faint orange line on the upper side of the white patches. My SNS friend (@kingbee1969 at Instagram) has at least 3 mushrooms, including ones of rarer colors. All the other marbles in my collection got a skinnier proportion for the stalk part of mushrooms, or... the white patches are wispy. Or somewhat opposite in the use of transparent/opaque colors. If you take a close look at the marbles in the puzzle boxes, some might notice two of the marbles got a light orange shade on the white patches. When I first saw these marbles, I assumed the orange tint was due to color contamination. But after coming across other examples, I came to understand that it was part of Seike's intentional design.

@davesnothere Good to hear that you got these marbles and I see what you mean. Talking about the toughness, you are probably right in saying old Japanese glass is softer. I remember when I got my first American marbles from premier makers on my palm, they looked amazingly beautiful as if they were freshly sent from a factory. I could tell they were hard and tough. About colors, it seems both crystal glass and soda lime glass can have bright colors. I just checked Satake home page to refresh my memory. The colors indicated by a star are soda-lime glass, others are lead crystal. Glass on the 4th sample board is the latest varieties of non-lead crystal, which were not available when I worked. I had an impression that vivid colors were for soda-lime and softer and cooler tones for lead crystal, but now it has been changed. So we cannot tell the glass types from the color? We need specialists.