Thüringen Thursday

[Chad G.]

3 hours ago, crashbelt said:

Here's a 9 hole Jaques Numerical Puzzle board with some one inch swirls.

Most excellent David  

[Chad G.]

                                  A couple more coats for this "Thüringen Thursday"

[Tommy]

[crashbelt]

Here's a nice big 12" board with faceted 23-24mm clear micas. Clear micas are more attractive than I'm able to show with my lack of photographic/lighting skills!!

[Tommy]

45 minutes ago, crashbelt said:

Here's a nice big 12" board with faceted 23-24mm clear micas. Clear micas are more attractive than I'm able to show with my lack of photographic/lighting skills!!

You have some incredible specimens.....I  enjoy your pics thanks for posting 👍💥💥💥

[Chad G.]

                                    Happy "Thüringen Thursday" time to    smore

                                                                                   Pee-wee

                                                                   Small, Medium   

                                                                                          Large

                                                                       EX-Large

 

[Tommy]

11 hours ago, Chad G. said:

                                    Happy "Thüringen Thursday" time to    smore

                                                                                   Pee-wee

                                                                   Small, Medium   

                                                                                          Large

                                                                       EX-Large

 

Wow.....nice handmades....💥💥💥🔥🔥💥

[Chad G.]

     Smore skins   some of these might look familiar to a few of my marble Brothers

[crashbelt]

2 hours ago, Chad G. said:

     Smore skins   some of these might look familiar to a few of my marble Brothers

You have great Josephs and Onions Chad - probably my favourite handmades!

[Chad G.]

8 hours ago, crashbelt said:

You have great Josephs and Onions Chad - probably my favourite handmades!

Thank you David, yes coats are #1 and skins are #2 , though your boards and most of the accompanying mibs are killer, most not even available here or it takes an extended amount of time and $$ to get your hands on them.

[Dave 13]

On 8/10/2022 at 5:15 PM, crashbelt said:

Here's a nice big 12" board with faceted 23-24mm clear micas. Clear micas are more attractive than I'm able to show with my lack of photographic/lighting skills!!

Another killer board thanks for showing us I’m thinking you have the best board collection around ,like Chad said they must be HTF I’ve never seen one for sale in Canada 

[Dave 13]

On 8/10/2022 at 10:59 PM, Chad G. said:

                                    Happy "Thüringen Thursday" time to    smore

                                                                                   Pee-wee

                                                                   Small, Medium   

                                                                                          Large

                                                                       EX-Large

 

Nice group of HM Chad every pic your hand gets smaller lol your last pic the big boys bottom left killer color combo 

[Jeff54]

On 8/10/2022 at 7:15 PM, crashbelt said:

Here's a nice big 12" board with faceted 23-24mm clear micas. Clear micas are more attractive than I'm able to show with my lack of photographic/lighting skills!!

That board looks pretty nicely fashioned. The Mica's also appear to be quite nice, as if it's a whole set of very well crafted  cane-cut, hand-mades too.  You can never know if these marbles have been a part of it all this time but could be  from the 1850's to 1880's.

I mean, it appears to fit the likes of what Danny Turner studied: Here's an exert from an article Danny Turner wrote that was on the web site (It no longer exists but was RunningRabitt dot com.) about 20 years ago. Danny and Gretchen Turner (Running Rabitt) use to have many of the highest quality  marbles on video tape recordings, you'd need to buy, for their live call-in auctions. 

“We have had the good fortune of seeing several hundred solitaire sets with what appeared to be their original marbles. Just from casual observation these sets can be divided into three periods. The following dates are my best educated guess based on the style and patina of the boards, associated inscribed dates, and the original containing box when it exists.

    The first period would be from 1850 to 1880. These boards are usually handsomely crafted out of beautifully patinaed mahogany, and we have seen several with inscribed dates as early as 1850.

   The second period would be from 1880 to 1920. These boards are somewhat less well crafted, and are made of oak, mahogany and pine. Sometimes these solitaire sets were boxed in well-made cardboard boxes with colorful paper labels.

    The third period would be from 1920 to 1940. These boards are usually crudely crafted out of pine and were sold in cardboard boxes.

    These three divisions are not always clear and there are some crossover characteristics between the periods.

    The marbles are distinctly different in the three periods. Marbles associated with the first period almost always have a ground, faceted pontil and are generally well made with fine detail. Marble types found on these earliest boards include Onionskins, Onionskins with mica, Onionskins with suspended mica; many varieties of swirls including latticinio, divided ribbon, single ribbon, and solid cores; green, cobalt blue, cyan blue, and clear micas; and ground pontil- hand gathered marbles referred to by collectors as transitions. The one thing all these marbles have in common is their ground, faceted pontil."

    I believe they went on to describe marbles in the second and third period, but I didn't save it.

[Tommy]

1.86in..

[Chad G.]

17 minutes ago, Tommy said:

1.86in..

Nice clean machine Tommy   

[I'llhavethat1]

Now you're rolling.

[crashbelt]

On 8/13/2022 at 1:54 AM, Jeff54 said:

That board looks pretty nicely fashioned. The Mica's also appear to be quite nice, as if it's a whole set of very well crafted  cane-cut, hand-mades too.  You can never know if these marbles have been a part of it all this time but could be  from the 1850's to 1880's.

I mean, it appears to fit the likes of what Danny Turner studied: Here's an exert from an article Danny Turner wrote that was on the web site (It no longer exists but was RunningRabitt dot com.) about 20 years ago. Danny and Gretchen Turner (Running Rabitt) use to have many of the highest quality  marbles on video tape recordings, you'd need to buy, for their live call-in auctions. 

“We have had the good fortune of seeing several hundred solitaire sets with what appeared to be their original marbles. Just from casual observation these sets can be divided into three periods. The following dates are my best educated guess based on the style and patina of the boards, associated inscribed dates, and the original containing box when it exists.

    The first period would be from 1850 to 1880. These boards are usually handsomely crafted out of beautifully patinaed mahogany, and we have seen several with inscribed dates as early as 1850.

   The second period would be from 1880 to 1920. These boards are somewhat less well crafted, and are made of oak, mahogany and pine. Sometimes these solitaire sets were boxed in well-made cardboard boxes with colorful paper labels.

    The third period would be from 1920 to 1940. These boards are usually crudely crafted out of pine and were sold in cardboard boxes.

    These three divisions are not always clear and there are some crossover characteristics between the periods.

    The marbles are distinctly different in the three periods. Marbles associated with the first period almost always have a ground, faceted pontil and are generally well made with fine detail. Marble types found on these earliest boards include Onionskins, Onionskins with mica, Onionskins with suspended mica; many varieties of swirls including latticinio, divided ribbon, single ribbon, and solid cores; green, cobalt blue, cyan blue, and clear micas; and ground pontil- hand gathered marbles referred to by collectors as transitions. The one thing all these marbles have in common is their ground, faceted pontil."

    I believe they went on to describe marbles in the second and third period, but I didn't save it.

Thanks Jeff - the Running Rabbit article is a good rule of thumb for dating solitaire handmade marbles and boards. I printed it off years ago - must dig it out! I use a detailed article by Richard Ballam, UK top expert on all Victorian board games, which is excellent for dating boards and identifying makers, but not much on the imported German marbles. 

I'm surprised that no-one has produced a book on Victorian solitaire sets as they are incredibly photogenic and important in the history of handmade marbles. Ideally a games historian from the UK where the biggest market was and most of the turned boards were made by firms like Jaques and Ayres, including the rarer non-solitaire types.

I've bought or handled 100s of sets over 30+ years collecting and together with my friend and fellow board collector Tom H, have a pretty good idea (never 100% sure of course) which sets of marbles are original to the boards. My collection is catalogued in detail, including my estimation of originality or not.

I try to say in my posts here if I believe sets to be original.

I bought the large clear micas I just posted, without a board. The beautiful 12" board, I put the clear micas on, in fact came with 5 badly damaged 1" onionskin micas - it must have been an incredible early example. So the set I posted is not original although it looks like it could have been! I think that around three quarters of my sets are original - a high success rate largely down to me collecting and keeping the best examples over the years.

Sorry for digressing a bit everyone - Jeff got me thinking!!

[crashbelt]

Continuing the clear micas theme heres my 3 examples together.

The smaller one is a 10" board with          18-20mm marbles. The other 2 are 12" boards with 20-22mm and 23-24mm marbles. All the marbles are faceted and the boards well made - so all from the early period. The 23-24mm marbles are not original to the board - the other 2 sets most likely are.

[Chad G.]

                             1 & 3/16ths banded lutz for this "Thüringen Thursday"  pictures I saved from the 09 and a blue banded one I found since just a smidge bigger. It took a while to find them this size this clean.

          

            

           

[crashbelt]

7 hours ago, Chad G. said:

                             1 & 3/16ths banded lutz for this "Thüringen Thursday"  pictures I saved from the 09 and a blue banded one I found since just a smidge bigger. It took a while to find them this size this clean.

          

            

           

Great size and colour combination.

[Leigh]

I inadvertently started collecting these German's and haven't gotten around to cleaning them. They came with other groups of marbles that I bought and therefore, I wasn't really looking for condition on them. I really do need to clean them - haven't gotten around to it yet. I am finding a bit of a passion for German's though - each one is a like a little work of art. 

[crashbelt]

1 hour ago, Leigh said:

I inadvertently started collecting these German's and haven't gotten around to cleaning them. They came with other groups of marbles that I bought and therefore, I wasn't really looking for condition on them. I really do need to clean them - haven't gotten around to it yet. I am finding a bit of a passion for German's though - each one is a like a little work of art. 

 

For a group of inadvertently acquired handmades there are some very nice examples there - particularly if they are in good condition. Very cool.

 

[Leigh]

7 minutes ago, crashbelt said:

 

Thank you! The larger onionskin is in pretty good condition and the one that I believe is a submarine is also in great condition. I think those are the two that would have the most value. I haven't researched these too much yet. 

[I'llhavethat1]

You could save yourself the trouble and send them to me for safekeeping?  lol.  Condition looks a bit rough in the pics, but I agree some nice examples.

[crashbelt]

Thursday again!

Here's a little 6" board with 14-15mm banded transparent swirls. Ground pontils and I have a feeling it might even be early 20th Century. An unremarkable set which I find rather attractive anyway!!