Ceramic marbles with stilt marks

[tankgrrl29]

@Ric i could see that ceramic marble you got from Bill coming from the Peltier property, but almost surely not being made by them. (as i'm sure you know) it's an old town with a lot of marble history. they held tournaments for the kids. and i have to believe that at least some of the workers also liked playing marbles, and it would be easy (for me, anyway) to believe that yours could have been lost by someone many years previous to when Bill found it. 

[Ric]

 

1 hour ago, tankgrrl29 said:

@Ric i could see that ceramic marble you got from Bill coming from the Peltier property . . .

Honestly, the particular site it came from wasn't what I was interested in and I have no doubt a ceramic marble or agate, a CAC or whatever could have been found buried on Peltier property. I wanted to know how much confidence I could have that this particular marble was dug there and, thereby, how much confidence I could have that it was not a modern knock-off. I wanted to use it as a reference to search for more examples, which I did, and successfully so, I think.

Does it look to you like the ones I got out of Germany are related to the one Billy found? That is what I am most interested in. And thanks for chiming in. 🙂

[Ric]

These common earthenware marbles are just over 1". I have five of them and they all show what appears to be a single stilt mark - the mark appears to be "as made" and is pretty consistent on all five. I am imagining there may have been some sort of rack with pins that the marbles were placed on prior to low temperature firing. Has anyone else noticed anything like this?

Am I the only person here that sorts clay marbles? lol

[hdesousa]

5 minutes ago, Ric said:

These common earthenware marbles are just over 1". I have five of them and they all show what appears to be a single stilt mark - the mark appears to be "as made" and is pretty consistent on all five. I am imagining there may have been some sort of rack with pins that the marbles were placed on prior to low temperature firing. Has anyone else noticed anything like this?

Am I the only person here that sorts clay marbles? lol

Interesting. Are the marbles glazed?  If not, they did not need any kind of support as the surface was in no danger of sticking to the kiln floor.

No idea what made those holes.

[Ric]

Just now, hdesousa said:

Interesting. Are the marbles glazed?  If not, they did not need any kind of support as the surface was in no danger of sticking to the kiln floor.

No idea what made those holes.

That's a good point, Hansel, they do appear to have a thin glaze on them though. I found all five together in a big collection I purchased many years ago and I think the marks are too consistent to just have happened by chance. As I said, it's the only significant mark on any of them other than typical wear.

[tankgrrl29]

17 hours ago, Ric said:

I wanted to know....how much confidence I could have that it was not a modern knock-off....Does it look to you like the ones I got out of Germany are related to the one Billy found? That is what I am most interested in. And thanks for chiming in. 🙂

aaaahhh i gotcha now. 

just going by appearances on a computer screen, they all look related to my eye. (sorry, not related to my eye... to my eye, they look related. to each other.  ) 

2, 3, and 4 all have those thin, jasper-like 'lines'.

1, 3, and 4 have similar "dipped" areas (dipped, meaning like how you'd color easter eggs and overlap some colors)

the thing i'd be looking for would be signs that someone took an old marble and altered or embellished it to make it look like something else. i think i've seen marbles that were double glazed and they look like crap (crackled, creased, and clumpy...). these aren't 'marker marbles' so the only other thing i can think of would be adding paint, or maybe nail polish. but i think you'd be able to tell if someone did that. 

adding this last caveat to say that i haven't had a lot of exposure to vintage ceramic marbles, nor have i seen any like those you show before. but i *have* run across quite a few of the mill ball fakes of different styles, and yours don't look like those. i feel like they would have jumped out at Hansel as modern if they were modern. 

[Ric]

33 minutes ago, tankgrrl29 said:

aaaahhh i gotcha now. . .

Thank you, I think the same, but it's really nice to hear someone else say it. 🙂

[hdesousa]

8 minutes ago, hdesousa said:

Here's a description of the provenance of those weird marbles on eBay. Seems legit.

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/24-excavated-victorian-painted-858932562

Scheibe Alsbach is also where scenic chinas, and probably many of the other painted china marbles, were made.  Part of the Porcelain Route.  Porcelain was probably more important than glass was in Lauscha.

 

                                                                                                                            (Showing off here, but also providing information that might not be commonly know known to marble collectors.)

[Ric]

45 minutes ago, hdesousa said:

Here's a description of the provenance of those weird marbles on eBay. Seems legit.

Excellent, thank you very much for the link. I looked high and low and never came across this page. They are sort of quirky and I like them quite a bit.

10 minutes ago, hdesousa said:

Scheibe Alsbach is also where scenic chinas, and probably many of the other painted china marbles, were made . . .

Oh my, those are beautiful! And as far as I am concerned, you can come here and "show off" anytime. I appreciate the knowledge you share and I love seeing these pieces - thank you so much for showing them!

 

[hdesousa]

There are some of these marbles on display here https://www.facebook.com/neuesschlossrauenstein/  They were found under the floorboards, when the porcelain factory was converted to a museum. Many of these towns were on the Porcelain Road.

[Ric]

1 hour ago, hdesousa said:

There are some of these marbles on display here https://www.facebook.com/neuesschlossrauenstein/  They were found under the floorboards, when the porcelain factory was converted to a museum. Many of these towns were on the Porcelain Road.

That's a nice group. I like the variety of designs and colors. I would think the ones with lines running through the designs are less common. Did you find them all together or put the group together over time?

[hdesousa]

1 hour ago, Ric said:

That's a nice group. I like the variety of designs and colors. I would think the ones with lines running through the designs are less common. Did you find them all together or put the group together over time?

Bought them from a couple different sellers from Germany.

[hdesousa]

3 hours ago, Ric said:

Excellent, thank you very much for the link. I looked high and low and never came across this page. They are sort of quirky and I like them quite a bit.

 

 

The  Kister Scheibe Alsbach porcelain factory was in operation between 1860 and 1990. https://www.theoldstuff.com/en/porcelain-marks/category/472-scheibe-alsbach-marks I know of at least one other ceramic marble factory in the area (in Steinach) that went out of business around the same time, and many previously unseen painted 'bennington' marbles came out of there.  My guess is that those 'weird' marbles are not new, but were probably made relatively recently, after we had stopped importing marbles from Germany.