Newbie asking ID help 2.

[Lbrewer42]

A second marble.  Appears to be pottery/porcelain(?).  Appears to have been hand designed from crudity and non-uniformity.  Measures .49-.50" with a caliper.  Surface is kind of crude and wobbles when rolling. 

Can be positioned so looking down at the top shows an upper hemisphere with alternating blue and white triangles with their points meeting at the apex of the dome.

The bottom hemisphere is the same, but its pattern is rotated so the bases of the blue triangles on top touch the bases of the white triangles on the bottom.

Any info on maker, date, history, and collectability appreciated.  

[Mojo]

Figure 8 ?? 

 

 

[wvrons]

I think figure 8's are only machine made. 

[Steph]

The crazing on this one makes me think you may have a used industrial mill ball which someone decorated to try to make it look like an antique marble.  

 

At 1/2" or less, I'm up in the air.   I don't remember seeing the hoax mill ball marbles being so small.  


Does it feel light like clay, or a bit heavier ....  (The industrial mill balls tend to have a heavy feel relative to their size.)

[Steph]

I don't actually recognize the color pattern from any era, whether antique or whether a style favored by the mill ball hoaxers.  

I'm going purely by the look of the surface crazing.

[Lbrewer42]

OK - I changed the battery on the caliper!  It says .60-.70 inches.  Sorry about the bad measurements before.

I cannot positively ID a clay marble b/c, although I have seen them, I have not, that I remember, hefted a legitimately identified clay marble.  

I only said the terms "pottery/porcelain" b/c it reminds me of the same feel/look/matrix of the porcelain insulators I research/collect.

I will gladly defer to your knowledge on this being a mill ball.  When I inspect it under high magnification, I see where the blue coloring seems to fade outwards onto the white from the blue areas.  I am only familiar with porcelain glazes like pottery and insulators, and do not know how to determine an authentic painted clay (again - assuming this was done!) marble. 

Is there some place I could read more about the mill balls and also clay marbles in general?

 

Thank you for your help. 

 

 

[Steph]

Well, this is about ball mills:

Ball mill - Wikipedia


 

 

I tried to find a standard link which is used to explain the Atlanta/Tennessee marble hoax, but it's not coming up for me in Google.  Maybe someone else knows the link.

Here's an old old thread I posted on the subject ... linking to other threads which probably aren't there anymore.  

https://marbleconnection.com/topic/6908-mostly-pix-fake-chinas-tennesseeatlanta-porcelains



It's definitely time for a new thread with more direct information, better pix and fewer external links.  



After I made that thread the kinds of decorations that we encountered on the mill balls has expanded.  But I still don't recognize yours.  So if yours does turn out to be one, then the designs have expanded a little farther.