Finding His Marbles

Yesterday I mentioned that MH (my husband) loves and collects vintage marbles. Most of the exotic marbles are found in antique shops or on ebay. Sometimes he goes to marble shows - did you know there was such a thing? Well, there is. He goes to Amana, Iowa to a marble show every year. The finest and most collectible antique marbles were made by hand in Germany in the latter half of the 19th century. Some were made by master craftsmen, while others were made by apprentices. A trained eye can tell the difference. MH has a trained eye but Mimi Pearl does not. I like textiles. Back to the marbles..... the glass craftmen created decorative canes of glass and basically “chopped off” portions of the cane to form the marbles. On the old handmade marbles, you can see a “pontil” mark where the marble was cut off of the cane. The photo below includes 2 very large marbles, a marble ashtray, a couple of small marbles, and some sort of art glass item that I cannot identify but thought was worthy of a photo.


If you look closely at the enlargement of this photo, you may be able to see the pontil mark. It just looks like a rough circular area around the spot where the center swirl of the marble comes together. Speaking of the term “swirl”, that is what this type of marble is called - a Swirl. It is but one of many styles of handmade German marbles.









I asked MH if children really shot marbles with those huge orbs. He looked at me and replied that of course they did. Could I not see all the dinged up places in the marbles? That is how the dings got there - from shooting. MH tells about how his parents punished his older brother by taking his marbles away from him when they found out he was shooting for keeps. Some of the terms commonly used today, such as “lost his marbles” and “for keeps” originated in the days when children shot marbles.

The incident that triggered this blog entry relates to how MH spent his late afternoon. At this time of the year when the fields have been plowed for planting the season’s crops, MH goes to sites where old houses and schoolyards were and searches for marbles. He is able to do this until the crops grow large enough that he can’t be walking around through the “middles”. He always comes home with muddy shoes, but if he has at least a few marbles in his pocket, he is as happy as a clam. There is just no accounting for hobbies!