Handgathered?

[venwood]

This is sort of translucent lavender base white, yellow, and a light will go thru it size .820 13/16 any ideas who was using these colors. The pontil looks to be fire polished that picture didn't come out so well can retake it if needed.

[Steph]

LOL ... I posted here and it didn't show up.

Maybe I shouldn't have said what I said!

I mentioned eggyolk.

[ann]

Maybe I should keep quiet too eggyolk. Check the pontil closely -- it may be a very-well-faceted ground pontil. If so I'd go for German, one of the Greiner ones people used to call Leighton. Those colors were used in those.

If it's really fire-polished I'd be surprised, but less so if it were melted. I suppose it's possible for it to be American / Leighton. But maybe Barberton, with those colors. I don't remember seeing more than two colors very often in Leightons. Like I have a case full of them at home.

[venwood]

Here is a picture of the pontil doesn't look faceted but does have ground marks but is also smooth.

[ann]

Yep, I shudda kept quiet. Can't tell about that pontil.

[lstmmrbls]

Looks like ground pontil with light grinding and wear that helps hide it?

[venwood]

So I am not sure who you all are saying is the maker. When they fire polish a pontil don't they grind it first then put the fire back to it to smooth it out or is it just all fire where it would make to pontil disappear.

[ann]

Looks like ground pontil with light grinding and wear that helps hide it?

I'd go for that. If so, then it would be one of the sought-after German ground pontils usually associated with the Greiner family.

I think some of our terminology is confusing. As I understand it >>

"Fire-polished" is today mostly associated with contemporary marble makers, I think. It essentially obliterates any trace of a pontil. Is this right, Migbar? If you're around?

"Melted pontil" is associated with the American marbles produced by Harvey Leighton in several locations (Navarre, Barberton, etc.), and you can generally see that heat has been applied to the cut-off point of a marble, enough to make the roughened glass "sink" back into the body of the marble. It can look like a very low smooth wart; sometimes there is carbon "staining" around it.

I doubt if any marble pontils either here or in Germany were ground, then polished (reheated). Not worth the cost of the process, By the 1880s or so, the German makers seemed to have stopped even grinding their pontils, for economic reasons . . .

[Ric]

Hmmm . . . The colors are Interesting. The pontil does look like it may have been ground - not faceted though. Early German does seem like a good possibility.

[richsantaclaus]

Fire polishing means you totally heat the entire marble's surface of the sphere to make it as smooth and round as it can get which includes removing the original pontils.

[ann]

That's what I thought -- thanks.

[Ric]

Rich, So original makers did not just fire polish the pontil, but the whole marble? Am I understanding you correctly?

[sissydear]

the ones I've watched fire polish the two pontils. The rest of the marble doesn't need as much. It comes out slick from the mold depending on skill. Of course if there's a blemish they can fix it with the torch.